For the latest issue of Spain’s #RevistaPan magazine @colectivolapepa @librosconmiga, the ever inspiring dynamic Beatriz Echeverría @elhornodebabette asked me to describe the process of writing a bread recipe, whether that’s for a bakery or a book. Bea asked if I had pics to go with it. And that’s when I found what I thought I’d lost, a folder with all my bread recipe writing from the 1990s.
Up until Christmas 1995 I’d been part of the opening team at Mezzo in Wardour Street with head chef @johntorodecooks, and chefs @chrisgalvin8 and @chefmanx.
Early in 1996 I went to work at Yael Mejia’s Baker & Spice, at that time a fairly straightforward French-style bakery. Yael was looking for breads that would take things in a new direction, and was especially taken with the (now legendary) brilliant Israeli talent Erez Komarovsky @erezkom, who we later went to visit in #TelAviv, who baked crazily vibrant breads.
So for one recipe, riffing on Joe Ortiz’s @gaylesbakery Sourdough Apple Bread from the groundbreaking “The Village Baker” @tenspeedpress, I made a Bramley Apple Sourdough, using apple juice in the preferment and raw Bramley apples in the dough: it’s written in French because the baker I worked with didn’t speak or read English.
Then I had the chance to create my own bread recipes and be original. In 1997 a restaurant called “The Collection” opened in Draycott Avenue and the owner, Mogens Tholstrup, told me he wanted bread for the menu like he’d eaten in LA, with some vigour and style to it. I thought about roasting whole cloves of garlic in an oil, brown sugar & balsamic vinegar basting, then folded in layers through a ciabatta dough that was sliced through so the bands of flavour faced upwards. Our breads became renowned in London very quickly, sold at @sainsburys thanks to then head buyer @brigette.hardy, and in turn led to my first book “Baking with Passion” being commissioned in 1998 by @quadrillebooks.
So write your recipes down, they’re the stuff of inspiration. The last pic is from @marieclaireau in 2000 with words by @nealewhitaker, pictures by @petrinatinslay, editor @donna.hay
