However, this year we also wanted to do something more inclusive, affordable and easy, for anyone who has even the slightest yearning to bake without going overboard on techniques and complexity. So when the Oundle International Festival organisers wanted to make bread baking a big part of their summer event it looked like the right opportunity.

Tickets for each workshop are £12.50, children under 12 free. Book for both events and receive a £5.00 discount.

On Saturday 17th July I am doing two demonstrations:

10.30am: The easiest fastest bread making class in the world:

If you’ve never even made bread then this demonstration class will get you riding on a bread roll. We’ll use a very easy recipe, made with affordable ingredients, and produce a light textured, moist and well-flavoured bread with barely any kneading or shaping. You’ll leave thinking “that’s a bread I can make at home”. Demonstration lasts 90 minutes.

2.00pm: Sourdough: how to bake a better loaf:

Learn the three-stage sourdough method that will transform your bread and make it light, full of aeration, and produce a rounded loaf no matter what recipe you use. Whether you’re a sourdough novice or an experienced baker, the demonstration will give you the important techniques that will improve your baking quickly. Demonstration lasts 120 minutes.

The classes will take place in the Victoria Hall, West Street with tickets available from the Oundle International Festival Box Office, 4 New Street, Oundle PE8 4ED 01832 274734 or online at www.oundlefestival.org.uk

See www.oundlefoodfestival.co.uk/breadmaking.html

Dan will be returning to Cookery School, near Oxford Circus in central London, to teach his popular Sourdough masterclass on two dates in the next few weeks: Friday July 9th and Friday September 10th 2010.

The classes will run from 9.30am to approximately 4.30pm, and will cover all the stages from making and keeping a healthy leaven through to the finished loaves coming out of the oven, with a special session devoted to shaping your dough to create that perfect effect. There is also time to talk with Dan, either over the traditional Cookery School lunch or at the end of the day, and to ask him about any problems you may be having with your loaves.

These classes are suitable for a passionate beginner or someone with some experience of bread making who wants to refine and develop their skills, and Dan tries to provide a fairly full day of practical bread making tuition. The location is not wheelchair accessible (one flight of stairs) and the class size is limited to 14 people.

All bookings should be made through Cookery School (email info@cookeryschool.co.uk or telephone 020 7631 4590), or email us if there’s anything you’d like to check before booking.

I took these photos when Loafer was owned and run by brothers Georg and Antoine von Baich and their family, two Canadians who were such a vital part of good baking in Melbourne during their years there.

Though they’ve now moved to Europe to pursue new ambitions, I understand that Loafer continues to produce some excellent bread and cakes, under its new owner, Andrea Brabazon, and it remains on my ‘must visit’ list whenever I’m in Melbourne. The shop has a wonderful sense of light and space, which I hope these images capture.

 

 

 

 

 

 

Loafer Bread
146 Scotchmer Street
North Fitzroy 3068 VIC
Telephone: (03) 9489 0766

looking out from the back seating area at Crust and Crumbs in Amsterdam, down a 'tunnel' lined with big loaves and preserves

When we visited, this bakery was known as ‘Crust & Crumbs’, but we understand it has since re-opened as the ‘Vlaamsch Broodhuys’.

slices from the bread at Crust & Crumb

paper wrapped individual crumbles and applecakes

loaves sit stacked behind the counter on a spotlit shelf

the setting is as remarkable as the bread; watch out for cyclists who aim at pedestrians

distorted cups hold either fresh coffee or sweet butter biscuits

organic jams and fruit pastes on the shelf

a multigrain loaf (back) and a leaven bread (front), baked with a thick dark crust

above, all that plastic but are they an Easter treat or a horror story? Michael Hanson did what any man would do, sacrificing his digestion for the sake of knowledge and eating his way through the hot cross buns of Britain

ot Cross Buns, Hot Cross Buns, one a penny, two a penny, Hot Cross Buns”. Except that at Harvey Nichols, the ultra-swish London department store, they cost £1; a pound a pop! But head down to your local supermarket and you could pay as little as 10p. Now, it is said that quality comes at a price but is such a differential worth it? Is the cheapest so unbearably bad? And the most expensive: ostentatiously overpriced, or worth every penny?

My task is to find out. Is there such a thing as “The Best Hot Cross Bun in Britain”? As an experienced baker I feel well qualified to undertake such a mission. I was putting paper crosses on hot cross buns (HXBs) before I left junior school. I even remember the practice of placing little metal crosses on slowly proved buns and removing them after baking, leaving a pale, shadowy imprint of a cross.

above, straight from the oven at home, these buns look perfect, puffed and golden with the pale crosses standing out clearly

Easter was a very special time for me, out-of-school hours spent in a cramped, old fashioned bakery, one-speed Artifex mixers, an antique Alfred Hunt drawplate oven, washing, cleaning and drying fruit in the hot flour loft above the bakery. I ate so many sultanas it’s a wonder I could manage a single bun. But when they came out the oven, oh, the smell and sight of 500 HXBs on the drawplate. They couldn’t cool down quick enough! They were heaven-made bread. I wouldn’t care when the old bakers told me I would get indigestion from eating them while hot. We didn’t have to glaze them, so golden were these objects of my desire.

My father and grandfather were bread bakers and I continued the tradition, baking all through my teenage years and into my twenties and thirties. Now I just bake for friends and pass on my knowledge. Is it possible to find the bun of my childhood: soft, warm, yeasty, aromatic, and more-ish? Will I find a bun that can be eaten warm from the oven, utterly butterless? Is it all just rose-tinted nostalgia? Does the Holy Grail of buns still exist or will I have to dig out my grandfather’s recipe and make my own? Whatever the outcome, I needed to find out.

The British love their HXBs. The condition we now find them in is a perfect symbol of the state of so much of our national food culture, even more so than the oft used example of the white sliced loaf. Our buns have become commoditized, bastardized, mechanized, and entirely ‘secularised’. Supermarkets compete to sell the cheapest, sometimes using them as a “loss leader” (where goods are sold at less than their cost price, because they can lure in customers and generate other business), leaving the industrial bakeries which compete to manufacture them with little or no profit.

above, glazed with a sugar wash and cooling on a rack, these HXB are just what I wanted

An automated factory is easily capable of churning out up to a million buns a day, with little or no human input save button pushers. The UK baking industry’s journal, British Baker magazine, said back in January 2007 “The UK is the world’s bargain basement for bread according to new figures from the Economist Intelligence Unit.” A situation that benefits neither UK manufacturer nor consumer. Our bun has been bastardized beyond belief, filled full of “necessary” chemical improvers and cheap sub-standard ingredients, pumped full of air and water, giving us the crumbly, cakey, emulsified pap that too often passes for an Easter bun.

Many non-Christian cultures revere bread as a gift fit for a Goddess, and for millennia have made sacred breads as reminders and/or offerings. Ancient cultures honoured the fertility of Mother Earth and the gift of fire with sacred and seasonal ceremonies. Then later, the Christian church continued these traditions and the Eucharist was respected with a symbolic ‘cake’. Today in many European countries, people still bake breads at home in a reverential way, to be blessed and offered to the community. Our HXB was a direct relation to these ‘eulogia’.

Any crumbs of our former sacred and blessed respect for food have long since been swept away from Britain’s dinner table by a public that has little respect for the earth, let alone the baker’s craft. What does our supermarket bun tell us about the state of our culture? Has our society become cheap, imitative, soulless and devoid of taste? Baking is a passion and we should find and support bakers who try to bake our daily bread in a considered and thoughtful manner.

So I set out to try and find the cheapest, the priciest, as well as the tastiest HXB. What makes a good HXB? Here are my eight points:

1. A bun that is round and domed, not flat and square

2. A bun that is evenly- and well-baked to a deep golden colour

3. The crumb should have a soft-bread texture: that is, one that tears into flaky wisps of crumb rather than crumbles into sawdust or crushes into pap.

4. After being squeezed gently between the fingers, the bun should inflate again.

5. A bun that can be cut without crumbling, toasted without burning and buttered without disintegrating

6. A bun with ample fleshy fruit and peel, with genuine spice that allures not repels, that doesn’t taste of chemicals, burn your tongue or linger in your mouth hours after eating

7. A good cross, one you can pick off, short not chewy.

8. All this at a price most people in the street can afford.

above, the heart of a good hot cross bun

My odyssey began in London’s Knightsbridge in that temple of conspicuous consumption, Harrods, and from that luxury point encompassed the full spectrum of price and prestige. I can see that the homogenization of the high street made my task harder. Some small local bakeries still make a decent HXB, often at a fair price, but many lack the skills, and use bought in premixes (packets that combine other ingredients to make the baking easier) that simply need adding to a bag of flour, a block of yeast and a bucket of water – the fruit goes in later.

I found a good one at Dunns in London’s Crouch End for 60p. Greggs, Britain’s High Street baker is producing a very passable bun that is a credit to the remnants of the once proud Master Bakers of Britain. It lacked a generosity in spice and fruit but at only 25p it gets my vote so far.

As my search continued, I posted my findings in the Forum
If you find a better bun, or even want to report a bad one, join me there.

above, the open texture of a ciabatta, from a dough kept wet with 72% water (assisted by 30% strong white flour combined with a softer flour)

Remember: baking is not a set of separate processes, but rather one single process defined by different stages. Thus, change any part and you will cause changes in every subsequent stage, from mixing to baking. Assess each of the ideas presented below, and work out what modifications are best for you.

Stretching the dough: gently tipping the dough on to either a flour dusted or oiled surface, light pressing out and stretching the dough into a rectangle, and finally giving it a ‘book fold’ before returning it to the bowl, then repeating this every hour or so during the bulk fermentation.

above, even the gutsiest wholewheat loaves can display an open crumb texture

Increase the dough’s water content: with a more fluid dough, it is difficult to maintain a bold, round shape during proving and baking. Some sort of dough containment, such as a cloth-lined and flour dusted basket, or a flour dusted proving board may be needed (a heavy dredge of flour on a wooden board will hinder the spread as the dough proves). Too wet a dough, and it is a problem keeping the slashes clean and open. So for sheeted doughs and flat breads this is useful.

Use a sour leaven, or old dough addition: either in place of or in addition to commercial yeast. I often rely on the combination of a small percentage of commercial yeast (0.5%) and a sour starter (naturally fermented, and used at around 30% to flour weight), as it gives both speed (a bulk fermentation of 2 –3 hours @ 22C, depending on the strength of the gluten in the flour, and a final prove of 2 ½ – 3 hours, depending on the ambient bakery temperature. And yes, I would describe this as ‘yeasted’ bread.

Extend the fermentation with as little leavening as possible: often this requires some control of the temperature, as in a retarding cabinet. I find that if the temperature is kept at around 15C – 17C, this seems to allow tighter doughs to develop a more expansive texture when mixed with a sour or combination starter.

Use a pre-ferment: I don’t know whether to thank either my US or French colleagues for this one, and the method I use depends on the mixer type that I’m using. With a fork petrin, I mix the sour leavening with the flour, mix for 1 – 2 minutes, then leave in the bowl for 20 minutes. Next I’ll add any additional yeast (if I’m using it), mix for a further 5 minutes, then add the sea-salt mixed with a little water, and mix for a further 4 minutes. I add the leavening at the beginning here because I have found it difficult to mix the dough evenly in a petrin. However, after talking with baker friends, I’d suggest that with a twin-arm or a spiral, leave the leaven out, mix the flour and water, leave for 20 minutes, then add the leaven, any additional yeast, and after a few minutes, the salt.

(originally published in British Baker)

Foccacia has a home, in Italy, and a birthplace in the town of Genoa. That’s what Italians from Genoa tell me. But then as every man, woman and child of Italian extraction seems to have a slightly different take on their homeland’s culinary traditions, it is only right that there are many versions of the crisp oily Italian flat bread.

above, the dimples and salt strewn terrain of a foccacia, taking on slightly green hue from the olive oil brushed on after baking

In the most general terms, a focaccia is a thin sheet of bread dough, probably made with Italian ‘00’ flour, dimpled with the impressions from the bakers fingertips, and washed with oil, salt and a little water before baking. There is a tradition of topping the sheets of dough with a simple herb, vegetable or cheese (rarely more than one), but purists deny these variations exist, and prefer the dough kept simple.

There are many recipes for the perfect focaccia, and many bakers who will insist there is only one. So we should look at the possible ingredients, and find the recipe that works best for your bakery. Below is a simple recipe I’m using at the moment, and following that, thoughts on the ingredients used.

The dough

1000g Italian 00 flour (100%)
325g sour starter (32.50%), made with 50% flour to 50% water
7.4g slow-activity yeast (Craftbake) (0.74%)
22.4g fine sea salt (2.24%)
25g dark dry malt (Edme) (2.50%)
50g extra virgin olive oil (5.00%)
50g refined pork lard (5.00%), optional
650g water at 10ºC (65.55%)

final dough temperature around 22ºC

above, a cut section from the focaccia showing defined aeration and thin upper and lower crust

Mix on first speed for 3 minutes, then on second speed for 12 minutes (until very elastic and forms a fine membrane when stretched between the fingers). Tip into a tray brushed with a liberal amount of good olive oil (500g per 10kg of dough), cover with a plastic sheet, and leave at 22ºC – 25ºC for 2 hours, turning the dough every 45 minutes, and using more oil where necessary. Pin out into an oil brushed 4-sided tray, short prove to recover, dimpled with fingertips, brushed with oil/water/salt mixture if desired, sprinkle with extra flaked sea salt, and bake in a hot 230ºC deck, top heat 7–8, bottom heat 2-3, for 30+ minutes, until a good golden brown on top.

The ingredients and method

Firstly, the flour for any flat bread has slightly different requirements to that for a 400g round English loaf. We’re not looking for too much oven spring, perhaps more generous extensibility than strength in the available gluten, and above all we want tenderness rather than toughness. One popular recent characteristic, though perhaps not entirely traditional, is for the crumb to display a wild, open texture. New Zealand baker Peter Burge, formerly of the Exeter Street Bakery, London, created a dramatic open texture in the sheet Focaccia sold at their high street bakeries with strong flour and long fermentation. By cutting a traditional ‘00’ Italian flour with another stronger white flour, such as Dove’s Farm’s excellent Biobake Strong White Bakers Flour, a similar result can be achieved.

above, cracked black peppercorns and cheese melts into the surface of the foccacia, cut here to show an open texture to the crumb

However, be careful in using very strong flours. Sometimes the flavour can be a little thin, and with strength comes a tough bite, so consider their use carefully and reduce the amount of strong flour in the mix until you achieve the result you require. Strong white flour added up to 30% of your total flour weight should suffice. My own preference lately is to use a single Italian flour with a slightly higher strong gluten content.

In this way you get a result made entirely with Italian flour (a selling point), together with a bite and texture that seems appropriate. There is a slight loss in crumb aeration, but the dough flavour is enhanced. Other flours can be used, if labelling with origin of ingredients is not a selling point or concern. A mixture of baguette flour (T55) or traditional baguette premix (such as Moul-bie’s Campaillette) and strong white flour, could be used and will given rather striking results, though might struggle to claim any authenticity.

But one of the key factors that affects crumb aeration is water content. Simply put, the more water the more holes. Firstly, remember that the available gluten in a flour is activated when water hydrates the strands of protein (gliadin and glutenin) which bind to form gluten, and their individual qualities of strength and elasticity will combine to give the final gluten its final characteristics. So different levels of gliadin and glutenin will result in different characteristics to the final available gluten. Make sense? Generally speaking, if a flour can hold a greater proportion of water, its ability to extend and hold carbon dioxide created by the yeast will be greater. And with it, the possibility of more holes in the final dough. How much water? If you’re using 100% Italian ‘00’, then probably not much more than 65%. If using a mixture of Italian and strong white, then up to 68%. If using a t55 and strong white up to 50%, then that can be increased to 70+%.

above, halved cherry tomatoes, tossed with olive oil, sea salt and thyme, are baked on top

Other ingredients typical would be malt (2 or 3%), yeast (up to 1% if using a souring with an extended prove, without the souring up to 1.5%), salt (less than 2% if you are salting the top of the focaccia), and some sort of fat (5 – 10%). In the north of Italy, rendered pork lard is used commonly, and it is a flavour that is particularly suited to the bread. However, given many customers dietary restrictions, the addition of a small amount of olive oil into the mix will be enough. The combination of malt and fat help to colour the bread quickly in the oven, and stops the thin dough drying out too much during the baking. Given the old links between brewing and baking in Europe, the use of malt is also quite authentic in most of our fermented breads. I also add a sour starter to the mix at 30 – 35% of total flour weight.

But it’s also important to fully work the dough during the mixing and to aerate the focaccia dough during the bulk fermentation if this capacity is to be utilized. In a small plant or bakery, where hand skills can be employed, I find that turning the dough in a tray spread with good olive oil, as you would turn puff pastry, helps to introduce more air pockets throughout the dough. Every 40 minutes or so, the dough is very roughly pinned out in the tray, dimpled with the fingertips but not really degassed, then folded upon itself in thirds. The oil helps protect the focaccia dough from the rigors of the stretching. If you get tearing on the dough surface, then use more oil.

To achieve that final open texture in the sheet focaccia, there is one more technique to remember. By stretching the dough into the sheet corners gradually, with short rests in-between handling, small air pockets will also be stretched into long elliptical pockets, which will expand upwards in the oven heat into large holes. Dimple the surface with your fingers while you push the dough out into the tray, but do not go so far as to degass the dough. Rest the dough then stretch it finally into the corners of the sheet. Then let the dough have a short final prove for 15 minutes at a warm temperature (28C+), before baking in a hot (230C) oven, with a little steam, top heat high (7 or 8) and bottom heat low (2 or 3).

above, fresh from the oven (it's actually hurting the baker's hands), the baguette looks taut and slightly burnt on the edges of the tears

…would smell as sweet.

Recipes and tricks for improving your sticks

(Originally published in British Baker)

Recipes for the perfect baguette are probably as numerous as bakeries in France, and each baker appears to claim a secret ingredient or technique that makes him the star boulanger. But do they have anything in common?

Well, flour for a start. A perfect baguette begins and ends with the right qualities in flour. Soft wheat does make for dough that requires slow cool mixing, leaving the mixer at around 22 – 23ºC, creating a dough that is delicate and difficult to handle.

Next, cool water is needed to achieve that final dough temperature. Following that, a bulk fermentation of at least 45 minutes, but often longer. Then the dough is scaled, lightly rounded, left for 15 – 20 minutes, before being shaped with the aid of a baguette moulder and left to proove on a flour dusted cloth. To finish, the baguette is transferred to a peel or a setter, slashed 6 or 7 times with a sharp blade, and deposited on a hot stone to bake. These are the rules of the baguette, set in the stone of tradition.

above, each of the cuts slightly tears, and when sliced the crumb shows an open texture

However, the only way to judge a perfect baguette is by tasting one. Remember the days of the fine English ‘French Stick’? Remember that deliciously tough elastic crust, with a smooth brilliant white crumb and those dainty dimples left from the perforated cradle that the dough sat in, while it baked in its fan-assisted oven? Well, the perfect French baguette is a different beast altogether. We’re looking for crispness in a thin tender crust, a creamy-coloured crumb with an uneven aerated light texture, and the oval circumference and dark base crust only achieved through stone-sole oven baking. The taste should be of wheat with a hint of acidity, neither too sour nor too yeasty.

But to simplify things a little, lets start with a very simple and rather ordinary baguette:

1.000kg T55 (100%)
0.650kg water at 18 – 20ºC (65%)
0.020kg yeast (2%)
0.020kg – 0.023kg salt (2% – 2.3%)
1.690kg total weight

Mix together on 1st speed for 3 minutes, then on 2nd speed for 7 minutes. Remove from bowl, leave to bulk for 45 minutes, the scale, shape and proove. Cut with a blade (seven slashes), and then bake at 225ºC for 25 minutes, with a little steam in the beginning and the vent open after 15 minutes.

To be fair, I don’t know any baker using a recipe as simple as the one above. It produces a bread so uniform, and unspectacular, that there is no gain in making it yourself. However, by tweaking the recipe a little we can soon change that.

If we start by making a sponge, we can begin to add character to the baguette by opening up the texture. Here is the way I change a direct recipe into one that uses a sponge and dough. Take a third of the original total dough weight (appx. 560g), and then divide that number in half (280g). Then take that amount of flour and water (from the total quantities) and mix together with one quarter of the yeast. So our new recipe will look like this:

For the sponge:

0.280kg T55
0.280kg water at 18 – 20º C
0.005kg yeast

Mix together thoroughly, and leave for 2 hours (agitating the mixture briefly after 1 hour)

For the dough

0.720kg T55
0.370kg water at 18 – 20º C
0.005kg yeast
0.020kg – 0.023kg salt

Mix together with the sponge on 1st speed for 3 minutes, then on 2nd speed for 7 minutes. Remove from bowl, leave to bulk for 45 minutes, the scale, shape and proove. Cut with a blade (seven slashes), and then bake at 225ºC for 25 minutes, with a little steam in the beginning and the vent open after 15 minutes. As the sponge is a large fermenting batter, we have reduced the total yeast quantity to 1% of the total flour weight, split between the sponge and final dough.

Getting better, but still not to my mind a perfect baguette. Lets change the flour next.

above, the same dough as in the image below, but shaped into a ball, proved upturned in a basket, and baked with a little steam in a deck oven

Flours such as Moul-bie’s Campaillette and Viron’s Retrador are milled and blended specially to open the texture of the baguette. Changing your flour either on the direct recipe, or ideally on the sponge and dough method will dramatically enhance the texture and final crust on the baguette.

Before the introduction of these flours, I tended to cut the T55 with a little Canadian-rich English flour. This had the advantage of being able to tolerate more water in the dough, enabling the actual water content to be increased from 65% up to 68% (or 70%). This produced a very crisp baguette with huge bubbles throughout the light crumb. Very seductive, but difficult to manage and shape.

So the recipe would change to:

0.350kg Canadian
0.400kg water at 18 – 20ºC
0.005kg yeast

Mix together thoroughly, and leave for 2 hours (agitating the mixture briefly after 1 hour)

For the dough

0.650kg T55
0.300kg water at 18 – 20ºC
0.005kg yeast
0.020kg – 0.023kg salt

above, try and keep the crust colour relatively even - a baguette should display great control

Mix together with the sponge on 1st speed for 3 minutes, then on 2nd speed for 7 minutes. Remove from bowl, leave to bulk for 45 minutes, the scale, shape and proove. Cut with a blade (seven slashes), then bake at 225ºC for 25 minutes, with a little steam in the beginning and the vent open after 15 minutes.

Baguette au levain

This is the recipe I use. It combines the use of Canadian plus T55, together with a sour sponge replacing the yeasted sponge. This is not an overnight-yeasted batter, but rather a levain that has been started by letting a mixture of currants, water and flour ferment, then sieving the mixture and refreshing it daily with equal quantities of flour and water.

Let me warn you that producing a sharp healthy levain or sourdough is a craft that needs practice. There is a way around this, by using one of the prepared sour ferments available on the market, or by sending off to a company called www.sourdo.com who produce little sachets of dried yeast combined with lactic enzymes that will give the desired flavour, texture and crumb structure.

At the moment in both France and the US, electric fermentation tanks that keep the sour ferment at a constant temperature with gentle agitation, are becoming increasingly common in the bakeries that aim to produce excellence in quantity.

For the baguette recipe I would keep the sponge at 35% of the total flour weight.

0.350kg sour starter
0.650kg T55
0.350kg Canadian
0.625kg water at 18 – 20ºC
0.005kg yeast
0.020kg – 0.023kg salt

Four other techniques in use:

A slow, final fermentation at 12-14ºC is especially useful for baguette au levain, and if the yeast is reduced still further allows for a complex slightly sour acidity to develop. Also increases the crust colour when baked

Mixing the dough entirely on first speed, for 15 – 18 minutes, can help develop the crumb flavour and structure. If you have the time!

Mixing the dough on first speed for 3 minutes, then leaving the dough to rest for 30 minutes – 1 hour, before giving a final mix on second speed for 5 minutes. As above.

Delaying adding the salt until the last 3 minutes of mixing. Particularly good if you are using only a sour starter and no commercial yeast

above, a hot crisp thin-crust pizza, made with a naturally-leavened dough, straight out of Jack Lang's brick oven in Cambridge

he aims of the home baker are varied. For some, the only thing important is to produce a loaf cleanly with minimal effort. Bread machines fill the tin for those that desire convenient baking. But for others it’s the thrill of the effort, going after excellence and a primitive baking experience. Grinding the wheat for freshly milled flour, nursing a natural starter through it’s infancy to full-blown fermentation, blending grains and flours to create a personal mix of dry ingredients…

above, a thick layer of fragrant thyme grows on the warm roof of the wood-fired oven

Back in 2003, Jack Lang, ‘Entrepreneur in Residence’ at the University of Cambridge, and his partner Jill hosted an apple pressing day at their modern farmhouse in Cambridgeshire. Now, if you (like me) have ever wandered past the laden boughs of apple trees in late summer, and wondered what will happen to all of the fruit, this is one solution.

Within a small community, it makes sense to get together and turn the task of pulping and pressing several hundredweight of crisp sweet apples into an enjoyable weekend-long affair. So over one weekend in September, colleagues and friends of Jack and Jill collect the apples, help force them through a garden shredder, and then tip the apple bits into a hand-cranked press. Fresh apple juice with champagne (not a ‘Bellini’, more a ‘Normandie) wets the tongues of the workers.

Jill was left with the herculean task of cleaning up after the baking and apple pressing. If you have ever had to clean up after a baker, you will understand the trouble it takes to get the dough off every surface. That glutinous mixture of wheat-flour and water bonds to the tap handles, the cupboard doors, anything the baker touches.

But this was the only downside to a glorious day baking bread and pizza. When I arrived on the Sunday morning, Jack had on the kitchen table the dough that would be baked that day: a large batch of sour pizza dough and rye dough, placed alongside two loaves that had just come out of the Aga oven and sat cooling.

The kitchen looks out over an old orchard that surrounds the house. Apples are scattered on the ground underneath the trees, and to one side sits the brick oven, looking like a small house.

above, the craftsman at work, Jack Lang in a quiet moment on the baking day.

I asked Jack how he got started in baking. “I was at University and had a girlfriend who was a good cook”, he said, “and that got me started. After we split up, I still continued to cook, and gradually developed a mild interest baking. But it was later, after I had spent time in San Francisco, that my interest really took off”. Jack’s brother Charles became friendly with Ian Duffy (when he was the baker at the outstanding Daily Bread bakery in Boulder, Colorado. Ian now resides at Cook Natural Products, in Oakland, California, a leading distributor of Organic flour). ”He introduced Charles to sourdough baking”, says Jack, “and fired his enthusiasm to learn (a lot) more about baking. I brought back one of those Gold Rush sourdough starter packs, which was good. But after a week or so the flavour changed and it lost that sharp, vibrant acidity. So I decided I had to do better.”

It was at that time that Jack made the decision to eat better bread. ” I remember saying to Jack in his early bread-making days” says Jill, “that he should bake bread on a regular basis…. just keep at, keep at it, keep at it, and it would ‘come right’ in time – something I learned for myself in an earlier life when raising a family and baking all their bread”.

“Today”, says Jack, “I bake less, probably every week, but I still bake for friends on occasions.” The weather outside was warm and just starting to get sunny, as the light broke through the bank of clouds that had threatened the morning. We started baking a test pizza first, after a glass of apple juice mixed with champagne. As the oven was blisteringly hot, it seemed best to keep the dough ultra thin, with a light smear of tomato sauce, studded with pitted black olives, the odd anchovy, and a light drizzle of extra virgin olive oil. The peel was dusted with yellow cornmeal, and the pizza quickly slid onto the hot stones on the base of the oven.

above, straight out of the oven, Jack's sourdough loaf sits on the stainless steel pizza peel.

“We needed to replace an old BBQ that we had in the garden”, said Jack, “and decided to replace it with a brick oven. It was Jill who urged me to think about building a brick oven in the garden. We had been out to visit friends, who had a house near Poitiers in France. They uncovered a brick oven in an outhouse in their garden, built early last century which, would have been used as the communal oven for the village. So I helped them clean it out and fire it up again. I had taken out to France a sourdough starter that I had cultivated in the UK, so we mixed that with flour from the local supermarket, and baked our first loaf in the revived oven. So by then, I had that gleam in my eye….”

“When we got back, I started looking on the web to try and purchase an oven, and it seemed to be easier to build our own. At the time, we had builders working on an extension to the house. So we purchased a refractory shell (the dome that sits above the sole of the bakery oven) from a company in France, Four Grandmere, and had the builders spend a little time with some extra bricks building the side walls for the oven, insulated with vermiculite.

above, hunks of sour white dough sit ready to be rolled out, on a sunlit bench set up by the wood-fired oven in the garden.

“Traditional wood-fired ovens are very good at maintaining steady, even heat”, said Jack, “and are by design very economical. And equally, naturally leavened breads are very easy to manage, especially for the home baker, as the dough matures more slowly and the point when the loaf finally gets to the oven is less critical. I am convinced that naturally leavened breads, like sourdough, are great for the home baker and less problematic that other quicker yeasted breads.”

We took the pizza out of the oven, and quickly cut it into pieces. It had just a faint smoky hint to the crust, whish was both hot and crisp but tender inside (it’s always a shame when the base dries out to something that resembles a cracker). After this first test, we bowed out and let other people roll their own pizza.

above, a loaf of rye bread fresh from the Aga oven sits cooling on the kitchen table

And what if you don’t have a wood-fired oven? “Well, here we have an Aga, which is very good for baking bread. Domestic ovens often don’t get hot enough. Also, the Aga is very good at retaining the steam inside the oven, as it only has a small outlet for the steam. I just throw a cup of water into the base of the oven with the bread, and that produces a beautifully glazed loaf. ”

I left the day just wishing I had a big garden, and the drive to build my own oven. Below, Jack shares with us his seven tips for successful home baking:

1. Use a naturally-leavened starter. “Using a sourdough starter is easy,” says Jack. “You keep it in the fridge from one month until the next, and simply refresh a small amount when you need to use it”

2. Keep practicing your ‘baking routine’ until you find a method that suits you. “It was the constant baking that improved my breads”, says Jack.

3. “For many of the breads I bake”, says Jack, “I make the dough the night before and leave it overnight in the refrigerator”. This is a great help in managing your time when baking at home, when there are always other things to do.

4. Do keep a record of the temperatures of your flour, water, dough and room when you bake. “Temperature control is very important when you bake”, says Jack, “but don’t go overboard with it”.

above, tucked up in their linen-lined baskets, two rye loaves sit slowly proving in the kitchen

5. “Food processors are great for mixing bread, just remember to use the steel blade”, says Jack. My co-author on “Baking with Passion”, Richard Whittington, swears by the food processor and finds it much easier to use than the upright mixer.

6. Remember that when you bake brown, mixed wheat, rye or wholemeal loaves, you will not get the same volume in the finished loaf as you will achieve with white flour, nor as open a texture to the crumb. Just remember this and be content.

7. And finally, “Bake the dough from cold”, says Jack, who lets his dough prove overnight in the refrigerator at 4ºC. This, he feels, gives a better result.

About Jack:

‘Entrepreneur in Residence’ at the University of Cambridge, and CEO of Artimi Ltd, Jack Lang founded NetChannel, which was eventually bought by NTL, where he continued as chief technologist. During a rich career, Jack founded five companies, including Topexpress, and the company that grew into E*Trade UK. Though he originally studied applied psychology at Sussex University, after a degree in Engineering at Cambridge, Jack then took a diploma in computer science at Cambridge, and an MA from Emmanuel. He is the author of “The High Tech Entrepreneurs Handbook – how to start and run a high tech business”, published by FT.com, and widely described as both a business angel (now there’s a sweet phrase) and a serial entrepreneur – always starting something new. Jack is recognized as one of the leading UK experts on mass-market computer systems, e-commerce, computer security, artificial intelligence and interactive television. Not only a keen baker, he is a passionate cook and founded the Midsummer House restaurant (in Cambridge) in 1984.

an even swirl through the batter gives the best result

Marble cake recipes involve what appear at first to be a simple technique swirling two mixtures together in the tin. But getting those curves perfectly placed involves a little delicate intervention in the kitchen (if you want to try the technique, there’s a recipe here).

Surely a marble cake is a strike against good taste?

The term ‘marble’ is a bad fit. Don’t think of it as one those decorative styles that turned honest concrete into a bad imitation of Carrara’s finest. We’re talking gusty swirls and twisting layers that combine flavours and textures in harmonious or shocking rhythm, depending on you mood.

Ok, we might usually want our food sombre and monastically calm. But for those anarchic moments, when you want to hijack your Madeira cake and give it striking Kuniyoshi style waves of colour and flavour then marbling is the way to go. Remember, it’s never wise to be too natural or too plain.

So I just stir everything together roughly and spoon it into the tin?

Ahhh, you wish. The beautiful curves you see in the best cakes combine planning and chance. Left to chance you might get a brilliant swirl in the middle and bleak slices at the end. Or a vague stain of a swirl where you’ve stirred too vigorously.

No, the best plan is to spoon each flavoured mixture roughly where it needs to be in the tin, alternating with the other mixture, then tap the tin firmly on the table to remove air bubbles. Last of all use a chopstick or a skewer to drag a few slow curvy lines through the batter to gently swirl everything together to create a delicate swirl in the crumb.

Can I marble any two mixtures together then bake them?

It depends on the consistency of each and how thick you want the bands to be. Take the utterly beautiful Ottolenghi raspberry meringues. The raspberry mixture is (I think) a fresh sieved puree of berries that would be liquid too hold in anything other than a thin drizzle. So if you drizzle a little puree on each plain meringue then lightly twirl it with a skewer it will appear mixed through the meringue without disturbing the volume. If you try to fold the puree through the meringue while it’s in the mixing bowl you risk the mixture deflating.

For chocolate brownies, like these beauties from Bon Appétit, you can just spoon the mixture into the tin and swirl with a skewer. Or if you want a little more control you can put the cheesecake mixture into a piping bag and squirt this in swirls directly into the brownie mixture in the tin before lightly tweaking the result with a toothpick. Sometimes this is easier and gives more definition as the mixture wont be pulled around so much. If you want to produce a tray of these brownies for an event and they need to look the business then this technique is handy.

What about biscuits and bread dough, spoons and piping bags wont work will they?

Dough can be marbled but relies on kneading to create the swirls. Say you want an all butter shortbread like this delectable one from Nigel Slater, but combining pistachios with both chocolate and vanilla dough. Use the basic shortbread recipe, divide it in two, flavour and colour one half with a few tablespoons of cocoa and half the pistachios then just mix the remaining pistachios into the vanilla dough.

Divide each flavour up into 6 or 7 pieces then combine them randomly back into a ball of dough. Thwack the dough ball onto the worksurface to remove any air bubbles then very gently knead the dough just until the colours begin to swirl. From there you can roll the dough out into a sheet or cylinder to cut biscuits from. The same method works with bread dough.