From working as a photographer in the early 90s he found pastry and breadmaking a much better fit. His first book “Baking With Passion” (1999), won Guild of Food Writers’ Cookbook of the Year. His next, the breakthrough sourdough book “The Handmade Loaf” (2004) was awarded Observer Newspaper’s “20 best cookbooks" in the last two decades. Short & Sweet (2011), won Andre Simon Cookbook of the Year. He writes regularly for newspapers and magazines across the globe.
The recipe is an old 1950s commercial baker’s recipe for sourdough bagels that uses a sour “old dough”, essentially a piece of dough held over from the previous mixing. As soon as I made it I thought this is exactly the method I’ve been looking for. There’s lots of room for personalising it, using a sour “old dough” mixed very firmly brings out a natural ... Read more
This Japanese bread using fresh milk, thick double cream and pure honey has an extra-soft fluffy white crumb with a slightly rich and sweet flavour: it’s sometimes called Hokkaido Milk Bread 北海道生クリーム食パン, or more simply, Shokupan. This recipe is inspired by a version from the renowned Japanese baking school Mamapan. ... Read more
This is an easy bread to make by hand that stays very soft for days without turning crumbly, making it for me a perfect sandwich loaf. For the flour I used 2/3rds roller-milled white flour and 1/3rd stoneground rye and wholemeal which gives you a great flavour and higher fibre than a regular white flour, but still keeps it light-textured. If you're looking for a Japanese-style extra-soft white ... Read more
Merry Christmas to all you inspiring bakers. If you’re reading this in December it’s officially the start of the annual festive baking season but if you’re reading this in a European summer please put the slice of Christmas cake down and get some sun and exercise outside. I mean, there’s nothing wrong with a little Christmas cheer all year round but for me, at least if not for you, winter ... Read more
Rich with butter, combining three delicious grains – wheat, rye and spelt – in one very delicious easy-to-make pastry. I used stoneground rye and spelt flours, packed with flavour and texture, combined with roller-milled white bread flour that allows the pastry to roll out easily. The whisky helps to deepen the flavour: you can replace it with water, which will cause the pastry will ... Read more
Have so enjoyed making panettone these last months, from super simple to the complex marvel in the video below, and though I’ll tell you more about my long road to panettone “awakening” I was only able to tackle the complex mixing needed thanks to the power and reliability of IGF Fornitalia's dependable mixers now supplied by BakeryBits in the UK. Founded in 1974 by Giancarlo ... Read more
A crisp, nutty, sugary topping for panettone, with a slight crunch from the ground cornmeal and a hint of chocolate from the cocoa. It can be made up to a week ahead and stored in a sealed container in the refrigerator. Rice flour gives a more enjoyable texture to the ‘glassa’ when you chew it – in Italy a mixture of potato starch and rice flour is often used – but if you need to ... Read more
I'm writing this in the run-up to Christmas, and if you're like me, you're probably wondering what to make beyond the usual mince pies and some fantastic loaves of bread: a big ol’ fruit cake, maybe, or a yule log? Perhaps you're also finding that it gets trickier every year to find the right gifts for the budding bakers in your family, or something to hint that you'd be more than happy to ... Read more
Malt is one of those ingredients that we are familiar with but equally unsure of. Made from grains that have been soaked, left to sprout somewhere warm, then roasted at a low temperature and finally ground, the resulting sweet (almost caramel) powder is used to enhance the rise, crust and crumb colour of breads, and has been used for hundreds of years.
The sweetness in malt comes from enzymes ... Read more
This dish sits somewhere between a caponata, with cooked aubergine and a gentle sweet and sour (what’s known as agrodolce in Italy) flavour, the very comforting dish called peperonata made with roasted peppers and onions. Together with one of our great pasta - like Mulino Marino's Giant Spiral Pasta, or South Devon Pasta Co Hand-made Einkorn Fusilli - it makes a delicious lunch or supper ... Read more
The beauty of malt powders, syrups and grains is how their complex flavours and colours occur directly from nature’s own transformation process. As grains sprout, sugars are created, then slow drying and toasting enhances their sweet flavour, and the result is malt. So in this loaf, whole grains and four different types of malt combine with cooked pumpkin and toasted hazelnuts to create the most ... Read more
Sometimes, I've written recipes which use specific types of flour from small millers, and it may be that they won't always be in stock. If that's the case, do feel free to substitute something similar from the BakeryBits range. Here, for example, I’ve made a walnut sourdough using Heritage Harvest flours, combining their Roller-Milled White Flour with their darker Organic Stoneground Wholemeal ... Read more
This is the basic pizza dough that I use when I want a good thin crust. And to get an extra-crisp base I bake them on a Welsh Baking Stone, place on a rack in the oven, and just shovel the pizza onto it with a pizza peel.
Personally, I add a little more water than the recipe uses here to make the dough extra soft and easy to shape and toss, but try this wetter approach later when you’ve got the ... Read more
This is a three-day adventure to take you towards all-butter croissant perfection. Much easier and less effort than classic puff pastry, with much less rolling to do. This recipe only makes 6, but I’d like you to start here, getting your technique as sharp as you can, before you set up making dozens to supply your entire neighbourhood as the local viennoiserie star baker. You can do it, I ... Read more
Good morning bakers! It feels like Autumn is officially here, I have the heating on in measured doses, though I’m trying to introduce scarf and hat wearing “inside the house” as a thing. It’s the season when I’m all for comfortable baking: having all the tools at hand to make my baking stress-free.
Maybe that’s what I liked when I discovered BakeryBits years ago - that they sold home ... Read more
Hello bakers! I’m hoping your frazzled lives are calming down in this new-normal Britain, kids are back to school this week, and parents are telling me that some personal ‘quiet time’ has returned. With cooler autumn days ahead, and the joys of winter comfort eating not so far away, I’m also thinking ‘can I eat better, wiser, more responsibly, while regularly munching on grilled melty ... Read more
Dan Lepard, is undoubtedly one of the most influential bakers in the UK. His gentle, informative style gives even the most nervous of bakers confidence. Most people know Dan from eight years of writing a weekly column for The Guardian, but it's not just the newspaper that made Dan's work lead the way for home bakers baking artisan bread. You can pinpoint the resurgence in hand ... Read more
Back in 2003 when I was writing my sourdough book "The Handmade Loaf”, I travelled to Sweden to understand rye crispbreads better, making my way to the organic Roslagsbröd bakery. There, huge dimpled rollers were part of a wheel-and-belt old school apparatus – fascinating in its complex Heath Robinson ingenuity – which squished and extruded the sticky grey rye dough into pitted sheets that ... Read more
