It’s said of Vienna’s cafés that you consume time and space, but only coffee appears on the bill. These are places to think and contemplate, to sit and read, to discuss the weighty matters of the day over a cup of coffee and a slice of cake. One cup is enough. The waiter will not hurry [...]
I’d describe most cooking as an art of sorts, something that allows the cook a certain freedom of expression in the design and construction of a dish, some latitude to interpret a set of instructions into something new and different. I don’t think that about baking. That’s a science It’s a set thing that does [...]
I made this for Christmas Day because, pretend as we do, nobody in this family really likes Christmas pudding. There’s no point persevering with the lie anymore, so we did something different, and it was a vast improvement on the traditional bowl of stodge. This is our new Christmas pudding. The absence of flour makes [...]
Most of the bread I bake follows a fairly standard pattern. I’ve got a couple of staple recipes, one for an everyday loaf that works well for white or whole grain and any variation in between and a couple of ways with sourdough, too. The everyday loaf is the most versatile, and it can easily [...]
I made a pain au levain the other week, a French sourdough shaped like a torpedo, and full of glorious air holes, encased in a brittle crust. It was a textbook example of why ‘slow is best’ when it comes to baking bread. The levain, or starter, was set up the night before, giving it a [...]