When is a pancake not a pancake? When it’s a Staffordshire Oatcake! If you’re unfamiliar with these you might think that oatcakes are always crisp round biscuits, but these oatcakes are soft and tender, and were once long ago much more common, with variations found all over England, Scotland and Wales.
Here I’m using a Welsh bakestone to make them, as a Staffordshire ... Read more
Whether for Easter, a birthday, or just a delicious cake for everyday, this smooth extra light frosting will be a great finish for you best cakes.Method
1. For the cream mixture, gently stir together the cream and the icing sugar until smooth, then leave to one side. Don't whisk it, it should remain liquid.
2. Beat together the butter and sugar until light and fluffy. Then beat in the cream ... Read more
A delicious and fun take on the usual Valentine’s Day dessert so loved around the world. I’ve left alcohol out of the recipe, but if you like you could spoon a little marsala and rum over the warm cake when it’s fresh from the oven, so it soaks in.
Makes one 6” or 7” round cake, our Chicago Metallic tins are perfect for this.Method
1. Butter the inside of a 6&rdquo... Read more
Whether for Easter or everyday, brioche is a simple yet versatile bread, perfect for making into different shapes and providing a good base for additional flavours. We've teamed up with Angus McCaig, Head Chef at The Holt, Honiton, to create an authentic brioche baguette recipe. You can make a 'plain' version, but here we've used our Aroma Panettone essential oil together with Candied Orange peel ... Read more
Crisp with a tender crumb all thanks to beautiful Mulino Marino Type 0 Manitoba "Furia" flour from Italy. One of the world’s great millers producing exceptional flour... Read more
What is fortification?
It’s when vitamins and/or minerals are added to foods in order to enhance or “fortify” the flour and give it heightened nutritional and health benefits.
So what is flour fortification in the UK?
Currently all milled white and brown non-wholemeal wheat flour manufactured and sold in the UK has calcium, iron, thiamine and niacin added. This practice began ... Read more
BakeryBits is the UK's leading online stockist of couche linen.
Many of you have bought it already and we’re very happy that you like it so much. But there will be some of you who have no idea what it is, how it can improve your bread baking, and why so many bakers consider it essential. So here is a guide to buying and caring for your couche linen cloths.
Check out our full couche ... Read more
Whoopie pies had a moment of fame just when my book Short & Sweet was coming out, so I dedicated several pages to recipes for chocolate and vanilla versions, with maybe five or six other flavour variations as well: enough to stock a cake stall at the next village fete! If you want to try them all, you can buy the book HERE, but as a taster, this recipe which I wrote for Patrick at ... Read more
Welcome to our BakeryBits Christmas 2022 gift guide. It's a different world today and we know you need both luxury gifts that will amaze you and your loved ones, as well as small treats that are fun and inexpensive. So start with our Tantalising Top 10: gifts for any baker guide, or scroll down below that for our Top 10 for a Tenner (or under) guide.A Tantalising Top 10: gifts for any ... Read more
A crisp easy-to-roll rugged buttery shortcrust made with mix of dark rye and white bread flour, and a hint of real honey. Filled with your very best mincemeat. Then topped with a scotch whisky and walnut sugar crust. Giving you a very impressive Christmas mince pie with a knockout flavour too. And of course you can replace the whisky with rum (that's Faith at our BakeryBits HQ's preference), ... Read more
Using BakeryBits decorative sugars
What are they?
Not all white sugar is the same. You’re probably familiar with different brown and unrefined sugars, the coarse demerara sugar crystals and “coffee” sugar (even larger brown sugar crystals). But did you know that the same is true for white sugar? At BakeryBits we do a range of different white sugars especially made for baking, with ... Read more
Fuel Saving Baking: 9 tips to help reduce fuel costs
We hear you! You have these great skills, you're baking terrific breads, you have a good oven and our amazing flours, everything you need… and now you need to watch your fuel bill. What do you do?
At BakeryBits, we’ve been wondering: what would fuel-smarter baking be like?
So here’s our BakeryBits guide to reducing fuel costs!
1... Read more
Recipe by BakeryBits customer Fred Oliver, using our Foricher T45 flour:
Soft dough with pesto, garlic, sun-dried tomatoes, and Gruyère. Thanks to Kitty Tait of The Orange Bakery for the dough proportions.
Makes 10Method
1. Warm the milk. I use 20 seconds in a microwave.
2. Place all the dough ingredients except the butter into a mixer fitted with a dough hook and mix until it forms a ... Read more
A flavour-packed sandwich bread which uses a mix of some of BakeryBits top flours. By combining flours milled from different grains you get all the qualities of each flour included in the bread, from the easy-slicing character from roller-milled strong white flour through to great flavour and omega-3 oils from the wholemeal wheat and rye.Makes one large 1kg loaf, to fit our Traditional 3lb Loaf ... Read more
With our BakeryBits Handmade Heavy-Duty Stainless Crumpet Rings you can be cooking perfect crumpets at home, and with our sourdough recipe you can add ever more flavour than the supermarket ones.
Most crumpet recipes use a combination of yeast and baking powder but we’ve found that the best flavour is achieved with a combination of ripe or even spent 1-2 day-old sourdough with our Bioreal ... Read more
A delicious quick and utterly simple bread loaf to make, full of delicious linseed with a touch of honey, a super straightforward recipe we hope you’ll enjoy all summer long. We’ve been making it here for a few weeks and we think it’s our new house favourite. No kneading, no shaping, no stretching. Just mix in a bowl, spoon it into the tin, leave to rise then bake. We snip the ... Read more
What is… strong flour. I guess by the name strong flour has strength, but what does that mean?
If a particular flour contains high-quality protein that in tests produce a elastic, resilient dough, then it’s correct to describe it as strong flour. In the USA the more straightforward term “bread flour" is used, and baking bread is what strong flour should be good for, or wherever... Read more
Ok, so plain flour in the UK is "cake and pastry flour", am I right?
Maybe. Or not. The thing is, it’s not a specific thing, and that makes it hard to categorise. Bread flour – called strong flour in the UK – is generally assumed to have good levels of gluten, probably something around 11-14% protein, and score pretty well on strength and resilience tests; however plain ... Read more
