I wanted to have another go at Dan Lepard's Black Pepper Rye, making use of two new ideas. First, rather than attempt to control boiling the rye flour in the coffee, which gave lots of people trouble, I planned to just pour boiling coffee over the rye flour. Secondly, instead of dried yeast, I wanted to use my ordinary white-flour starter. Combined, these two offer an opportunity to practise (and attempt to explain) baker's math.

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This is tricky. I watched Itay Talgam's wonderful TedTalk on the way to a day of meetings at work. Lead like the great conductors is a fine, inspiring talk that Talgam has honed to perfection. A joy to watch, a joy to listen to, a joy to learn from. His main point is that the great conductors of g...

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My hardback copy (16th printing) of Mastering the Art ... was bought so that I wouldn’t have to contend with the stains on the paperback when I wanted to read rather than cook. (Alas, there's no recipe in it for humble pie.) So when Julie and Julia was released earlier in the summer, I was sniffy....

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It has been walnut season here for a couple of weeks, and we've been merrily cracking them at every opportunity. That, and glowing plaudits at The Fresh Loaf, persuaded me to try Dan Lepard's Walnut Loaf. Dan is rapidly becoming one of my favourite bread mavens (Santa knows this) and after the stunn...

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From yesterday's New York Times:

As many as 25 percent of the American farmers growing genetically engineered corn are no longer complying with federal rules intended to maintain the resistance of the crops to damage from insects, according to a report Thursday from an advocacy group.

No w...

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