What a year 2021 was. I hope that you’ve been able to bring friends and family together with your baking, and found some joy and happiness during a difficult time.

Like many of you I’ve found moments very tough, and wondered where on earth we’re headed. But thanks to so many of you there have also been many sweet days, laughs, and inspiration for the year ahead. At BakeryBits we’re always excited to see your baking pictures online, learning how you use all the different flours and equipment we sell, discovering that baking is a big part your life.

Our NYE recipe this year is for bolle, very soft and slightly sweet Norwegian milk buns, adapted here with a Japanese yudane milk-roux to get an extra fluffy texture. We hope you like them, they’re rather quick and easy to make, and perfect to see in the New Year served warm with a glass of bubbly: especially if you’re watch fireworks in the cold night air.

Also, for this special end of the year 2021 newsletter we wanted to ask friends and customers what they want to learn in 2022, for their tips and guidance on what we could give more emphasis to in our own baking, and find out where in this big wide world they’d like to visit and get excited by. Hope you find some inspiration for the year ahead right here.

John Torode

Star chef and judge on BBC’s MasterChef, and ITV’s John and Lisa's Weekend Kitchen, and author of John Torode's Sydney to Seoul: Recipes from my travels in Australia and the Far East.

Thing to learn in 2022

I’d like people not to be scared of baking, to lose the fear. I know that you have your followers who do it all the time but there are still lots of people in Britain who are really scared of making bread. And I don’t mean a sourdough or an ambitious loaf, I mean scared of baking any sort of bread. Like a simple soda bread, or a yeast-based bread, or whatever it might be. As working cooks, we have knowledge and we forget we have this, so we need to take people back to bread basics. I think we forget that there are people trying every day to learn the things that we know how to do already. Start 2022 with plan to learn the basics on breadmaking and keep building on that each month, and by the end of the year you will be able to make an amazing baguette, or a fantastic plaited cholla.

Place to go to overseas

I’d love to go to Japan and begin to understand what it is all about. It is a fascinating culture with fascinating people, all the way through to their extraordinary food culture and ceremony.

And in the UK

I love Bamburgh Castle and the Northumbrian coastline, it’s a really wonderful place. And there’s a village called Craster where they smoke amazing kippers, at L. Robson & Sons. At the pub The Jolly Fisherman Inn they make these huge sandwiches that you can barely get your mouth around. Would love to go back.

Looking to start breadmaking? Then our easy Almost White Bread recipe is the perfect start to begin your baking adventure.

Asma Khan

Chef and founder of restaurant Darjeeling Express, London, featured on Netflix’s Chef’s Table series, and author of Asma's Indian Kitchen, and the upcoming Ammu: Indian Home-Cooking To Nourish Your Soul.

Things to learn in 2022

I hope people learn more about the breads made in Indian homes by women. Naan bread is only something that was made in rural Punjab in the open tandoors by the male farmers, who were too far away from the village for the women to make hot bread for them. So they carried the dough and made the bread in makeshift clay ovens. It was something that was developed into an art by all Indian restaurants, but no Indian home makes naan: you’d need too much fuel and nobody can afford it. Everybody around the world thinks Indians make naan at home, and they don’t. The food I cook, we cook at Darjeeling, is the food of our ancestors and the women in our families. We make chapati, we make puri, we make paratha, everything that can be made on a tava, a flat iron pan. And there are versions of roti that can be made on the tava: there is a recipe for Khamiri Roti in my new book, a soft yeast bread that goes back to the Mughal that would be left overnight to slowly rise so that people could cook it in the morning.

Place to go to overseas

I want to go to Lebanon. The UK has some amazing Lebanese food in the UK, and when you travel in the Middle East you often get served great Lebanese food, but I want to know what that food really tastes like in Beirut, in people’s homes or in street cafes. That is my dream.

And in the UK

I would like to go to Devon. I see pictures and read stories, and I imagine going there and having Devon clotted cream with scones and jam. And I don’t know if it’s true or not but I imagine I will go to Devon and have a cream tea.

Try making simple flatbread at home with our Easy Mixed-Wheat Flatbread recipe, and check out our BakeryBits Welsh Baking Stone.

Edd Kimber

Baker, Instagram star at @theboywhobakes and food writer, winner of the first Great British Bake Off, author of the bestselling One Tin Bakes series, and Patisserie Made Simple.

Thing to learn in 2022

For a while now I’ve been encouraging home bakers to change their perception of what flour actually is and where it comes from. What’s exciting is how old grain varieties, sometimes called “ancient grains”, are much more accessible today. It’s hard sometimes for us to move away from a plain everyday flour suggested in a recipe, but when you understand where these grains come from and how the different farming methods used affects local agriculture, you start to see so many benefits. So many people don’t see beyond the supermarket shelf, and if they experimented it opens up so many doors to different flavours and textures.

Place to go to overseas

I’m very aware that I haven’t been travelling for a few years. I’ve always got inspiration from travelling and visiting different bakeries, and it’s felt unusual not to be able to do that. I’d really like to go to South Korea, it’s a country I don’t know very much about and though I like Korean food very much I want to know more about the country. I see such impressive baking and food generally in Korea. But I’m also an architecture “nerd” and I’ve noticed that in Korean bakeries and cafes they take their interior design to another level. Definitely a place to explore.

And in the UK

Scotland. I was meant to be in Edinburgh before Christmas but that got cancelled, as so many people’s plans did. I’d like to get to know Wales better as that was a place I knew as a child.

Looking to try using "ancient grains" in your baking? Then try our kamut/khorisan flour, a mix like Mulino Marino's Organic Sapori Antichi Flour, or even buy yourself a home MockMill and mill your own flour.

Kitty Tait

The red-headed wunderkind baker at The Orange Bakery in Watlington, Oxfordshire, and at just 17 has her first book, Breadsong, out this April with Bloomsbury Publishing.

Things to learn in 2022

There are so many things. I’d really like to work more with extremely high-hydration doughs, at almost 100% flour to water, the way Italian bakers make those amazing ciabatta and focaccia. Every time I try to do it there’s dough “soup” all over my table! So I want to knock out these silky smooth and bubbly high-hydrations doughs effortlessly. For home bakers reading this, and just starting out, I’d like them to think about other sorts of bubbling yeast mixtures than sourdough. In the UK old bakers would use a “sponge” method – that’s a flour, water and yeast mix that left to ferment overnight before adding the final flour – while in Italy they have a “biga”, in France a “poolish”, in America a “preferment”. These simple mixtures are a great way to add flavour and improve the texture of your bread, it’s only a day ahead you have to plan for and they’re a little less maintenance.

Place to go to overseas

I would love to go to San Francisco, of course, and see the bread there. But also what really fascinates me is Japan, and their Hokkaido bread method, with the yudane (water roux) dough making and their fluffy milk bread.

And in the UK

I would love, love LOVE to go to Kent, and go see Adam and Carmen Pagor’s Grain & Hearth Bakery in Whitstable. That’s my top mission in 2022.

Sophia Sutton-Jones

Instagram star at @sourdoughsophia and real-life baking sensation with the Sourdough Sophia Bakery and School, and Sophia’s book Sourdough Like A Pro

Things to learn in 2022

For me 2022 will definitely mean continuing to develop my panettone making, it has escalated into a serious obsession now, which I’m sure you can imagine. So we will be making the Italian bread Colomba, relative of the panettone, this Easter so I guess that means I’ll be making both for myself until our bakery production starts.
What I’d love people to learn is how simple sourdough making can be once you learn how, and I think this is why I have so many people on my courses. When you take all of the jargon out of it and simply sit down and understand what that actually means: it’s just flour and water, and you just need to learn how that ferments and why that ferments. And I want people to understand that it’s actually quite simple when you demystify things.

Place to go to overseas

I would love to go to Denmark, to Copenhagen, I’m a massive fan of Richard Hart at Hart Bageri and that would be my number one first stop. I love Danish furniture, their design, I’m sure I’d love the whole culture.

And in the UK

I would love to go to Islay, the Inner Hebrides of Scotland, and do a tour of the whiskey distilleries, and on the way go to Wild Hearth Bakery in Comrie, Crieff.

Azelia Torres

Simplifying sourdough making on Instagram at @sourdoughexpert and passionate about getting the best bread from stone-milled flour.

Things to learn in 2022

I would really like people to stop taking a bread recipe that they get given or take off the internet as gospel. I want people to understand that the particular flour that they use will change how a bread “formula” works, how much water the dough will need, how quickly or slowly it will rise, how rich or pale the crust colour will turn out, and elastic or crumbly the crumb will be. This idea that most recipes put out there that you simply use 500g “bread flour”, of any sort, is silly. It’s not the same as getting 500g white sugar or butter, because most sugars and butters follow a standard. But when you get into breadmaking, yeast, sourdough, water, it’s all about the blend of grains that the miller uses to make their flour. The trick is always to follow the flour you’ve got, so hold back some water when you make your dough, or place it somewhere cooler or warmer if it’s rising too fast or slow, and then change your recipe according to what you’ve observed.

Place to go to overseas

I wish I could jump on a plane, go to Hong Kong, and visit Gregoire Michaud at Bakehouse HK. Fantastic baking and he’s been one of the pioneers of artisan bread in the last 20 years.

And in the UK

There’s a bakery that’s just up the road from me in Enfield that I haven’t visited, that opened 6-7 years ago, called Holtwhite. They’re a wonderful success story: they were school teachers who started a microbakery at home, then did a course with Paul Merry who works from Cann Mill in Dorset. Holtwhite have a really supportive local customer base and I just admire what they do so much.