Welcome to BreadClub20 – Baking bread for fun, nutrition and well-being.

The Facebook page ‘BreadClub20’ may well be your first port of call……but here you’ll find all the recipes for my yeasted breads, sourdough and other bakery items.

Born out of Lockdown 2020 – BreadClub20 aims to start people off on their own bread baking journeys, re-energise home bakers or simply to share with you what I’ve been doing for a lifetime.

Why not come on board? There’s no subscription fee and you’ll also find us on social media at: Facebook, Twitter and Instagram. Just click on the words.

On this page are my last three bakes. You can click on the link for full details. However, if you explore the top menu, you’ll find recipes for Yeasted Breads, Sourdough recipes, an alphabetical guide to all the recipes and a running blog of bits and pieces.

“Let there be work, bread, water and salt for all.” (Nelson Mandela)

Above all…….Happy Baking…..

THE LATEST BAKES and POSTS

(for all the recipes – Click here for the Guide to the Recipes

Buchty

Welcome to another step-by-step recipe from BreadClub20. Why not drop by our main Facebook page by clicking here…. If you like what you see and enjoy the recipe, we hope you join us by ‘Liking’ and ‘Subscribing’.

Meet Honza…Click to read more…

Bánh Mi

Pronounced ‘BUNN-Mee’, the Vietnamese Bánh Mì is not only a bread but also a sandwich. The name is used not only for the bread itself and also for the culinary fusion of two cultures when made into a sandwich. Click to read more…

Spicy Fruit Brioche

Is it a bird? Is it a plane?

No! It’s a hybrid – a spicy bun loaf dressed in a Brioche frock.

All the softness and richness of brioche dough, with the spice and mystery of a rich bun loaf. Click to read more..

Pimlico Buns

On the main road from Pimlico to Chelsea, just by Ranelagh House and Gardens is Jew’s Row. It’s by Grosvenor Row and not far from the Chelsea Hospital. Click to read more..

Pane di Piume (Feather Bread)

Pane di Piume – Italian Feather Bread. You’ll find a wide range of formulae for this bread and, it seems the only agreement is that it’s shaped into long ‘baguette-styled’ loaves and glazed with egg white.

What seems to differ in ‘recipes’ or formulae is the quantity of sugar you can add. This can be a very sweet loaf or one that has less sweetness but still a richness of taste. Click to read more…

Easy No-Knead Sourdough

How easy can an easy sourdough be?

How little kneading does a no-knead sourdough loaf require?

Can we combine ‘easy’ with ‘no-knead’ and create same-day sourdough with great taste and texture.

The answer is ‘yes!’

Here it is. Click to read more

Pain Couronne Française

You’ll find many recipes for seasonal Couronne that are iced and have inclusions that may well include fruit, spices and nuts. Click to read more,,,

Bara Hardau (Bara Carddwy)

Bara Hadau or Bara Carddwy is an old bread made with wholemeal flour, treacle and caraway seed.

This recipe is from an 1891 book Y Ty, a’r Teulu (The House, and Domestic Economy).Click to read more..

Spelt Bread

Triticum Spelta – Spelt flour, otherwise known as dinkel wheat or hulled wheat has been a staple food for over 5000 years. From Bronze Age Man to the Romans and on into the Middle Ages, it was used for bread and bread products.

After the Romans left Northern Europe, tastes changed and Spelt now only survives as a native crop in Spain and Central Europe. Click to read more…

Viking Wholemeal and Honey Bröd

On a recent trip to København (Copenhagen), I bought a loaf from a small bakery next door to my stay. Click to read more

Viking Bröd

On a recent trip to København (Copenhagen), I bought a loaf from a small bakery next door to my stay. Click to read more…

Open Crumb Sourdough

Today, we’re going to build a sourdough with a fine open crumb. For this we need two things:

Borough Market Hot Cross Buns

Borough Market in Southwark, London has operated since at least 1014 and probably earlier. Snorri Sturluson, the Icelandic poet (1179 – 1241) describes Southwark as a ‘great market town’ in the Icelandic King’s saga ‘Heimskringla’ of the 12th century. Click to read more…

Lou’s Sandwich Loaf

This is Lou’s Sandwich Loaf. Lou is a Group Expert BreadClub20 baker and also an Administrator and Group Expert at The Sunday Times Cookbook Club on Facebook.

This is her Sandwich Loaf…posted here with her agreement, of course.

Lou’s favourite is the ‘chip butty’. For non-UK readers, a ‘butty’ is a sandwich. The word ‘butty’ dates back to 1827. The first recorded instance of it is in The Lancaster Gazette and General Advertiser of Saturday 14th April 1927. Click to read more…

Bara Pot Clai (Clay Pot Bread)

When my Welsh daughter married her Dutch husband, she asked me to make a hundred and so Welsh clay pot loaves for the wedding reception. I used 3-inch clay pots from the garden centre – after all, they only needed bread for the first course, not to take home for toast the next day. Click to read more….

The Starter Loaf – BC20 Back to Basics

This is an exercise for new bakers…or those whose baking is limited to the recipes that exist within one or more of the books you regularly got to and that may well sit on a shelf somewhere in your home.

Our first instinct as new bakers is to go to the recipe book. But, once we start doing that, we gradually run the risk of being drawn into a cycle of dependence. Click to read more

Classic Spelt and Sesame – a BC20 Back to Basics

What is spelt? Spelt is a species of wheat. It’s also known as dinkel or hulled wheat. It’s ancient flour. We know that our Bronze Age ancestors were familiar with it and it was a staple right through until the Middle Ages. The Romans baked using it and it was a popular bread throughout the Roman Empire.

In its natural form, it survives today in Spain and Central Europe. However, it’s also widely produced as a healthy food and a popular flour. Click to read more…

Classic Wholemeal – BC20 Back to Basics

This is another in the series ‘BC20 Back to Basics’. Today, it’s a Classic Wholemeal.

Wholemeal or Wholegrain flour is made using the whole of wheat kernel. The wheat germ is separated from the white part of the grain and then returned to the white flour at the end of the grinding process. Click to read more…

Pain à la Bière

Pain à la bière is often referred to as ‘ale bread’ or ‘beer bread’. It’s a generic bread that uses beer to enhance flavour and also to create a poolish, whose use lightens the final bake and adds an interesting texture. Click to read more…

The Farmhouse Brown – back to BC20 basics

Brown bread flour contains about 85% of the original grain. A good deal of the bran and germ are retained. It’s darker than strong white flour and ‘nuttier’. It’s not as ‘entire’ as wholemeal – it sits in the middle between white and wholemeal. Click to read more..

The Farmhouse Loaf – back to BC20 basics

To many, the basic Farmhouse white epitomises the ‘perfect loaf’. It’s also the perfect loaf to tackle at the start of your breadmaking journey.

Well, it’s actually the perfect loaf – anytime.

It’s soft, easy to cut and ideal for sandwiches and toast…right to the very last crumb.

But, first a word about the ingredients. Click to read more…

Grandma Johnston’s Limpa

Recently, a BreadClub20 baker, Keith Walker, sent me a lovely old recipe belonging to a relative of a friend of his…for Swedish Limpa. Click to read more..

Ciabatta – BC20 style

Did you know that Ciabatta was only invented in 1982?

It’s true….it was first produced by Arnaldo Cavallari and called Ciabatta Polesana after Polesine, his home in northeast Italy. Click to read more…

Twelfth Night bread

Twelfth Night bread is not the same as Twelfth Night cake. The former is most certainly a bread; the latter is, in the UK, a dense and rich fruit cake.

Twelfth Night bread, often eaten on the Feast of the Three Kings, or January 5th, has its roots in Christianity and marks the twelfth day of Christmas. Click to read more…

Pain d’épices

Pain d’épices is aincent. Its roots go back through the Middle East, past the Greeks and the Romans and back to the ancient Egyptians. There, it was a sweet spiced bread, baked in honey. click to read more…

Bara Hâd Pabi (Poppy Bread)

Bara Hâd Pabi…..or Pain aux Graines de Pavot….or Poppy Bread, if you like.

Adding poppy seeds to bread is popular throughout Central Europe and in certain areas of South Asia. The seeds are rich in thiamin, folate and essential minerals: calcium, iron, magnesium, zinc and phosphorus. That’s not bad when you think that there are over 3,300 poppy seeds to the gram and between one and two million to the pound. Click to read more..

Baguette Tradition

Welcome to another step-by-step recipe from BreadClub20. Why not drop by our main Facebook page by clicking here…. If you like what you see and enjoy the recipewe hope you join us by ‘Liking’ and ‘Subscribing’.

French baguettes take time and you need to plan ahead. True, there are lots of quicker recipes for ‘lookalike’ French baguettes – made with a poolish or with a sourdough starter. However, we must remember one very important thing…the ingredients for a true baguette tradition are enshrined in law. Click to read more…

Easy Pumpernickel

There’s German Pumpernickel and American Pumpernickel….pumpernickel – traditionally made with sourdough starter and pumpernickel made with a commercial yeast levain.

But, sometimes, you just want a nice easy pumpernickel. One that you can put together without too much planning and forethought. Click to read more…

Pain au Levain – BC20 style

Welcome to another step-by-step recipe from BreadClub20. Why not drop by our main Facebook page by clicking here…. If you like what you see and enjoy the recipe, we hope you go on to join us by ‘Liking’ and ‘Subscribing’.

Here’s a quandary. When is a sourdough not a sourdough?

We’re used to baking sourdough over a three-day period.

Day One is prepping the sourdough ‘starter’ or levain.

Vienna Bread

Vienna bread is more of a ‘type’ of bread than a specific bake. It’s usually formulated from a selection of ingredients that can differ and be swapped about depending on the baker and their own baking repertoire. Click to read more…

Polish Rye – BC20 style

It’s the week before Christmas. In pre-Covid times, we would have been enjoying our usual pre-Christmas trip to Eastern Europe. The beauty of the Christmas markets, wonderful food, the chance of crisp snow and toasty-warm apartments. Click to read more…

BreadClub20

The website for BreadClub20 on Facebook

Welcome to BreadClub20 – baking bread for fun, nutrition and well-being…