Recipe book

The Doorstep Baker: You can make all sorts of bread

We can’t all be that bad at making bread can we? After all, humans have been making it from flour and water for thousands of years. View and order your copy here

And I’ve discovered that if I can do it, then you can too. I used so many different recipes to try and make it consistently work. But I eventually started following my own intuition and the loaves got better and better. I may not be a ratio baker or a mass producer of bread. But I have baked thousands of loaves and I’ve learned enough to iron out the tricky parts. I bring you home made recipes that can be as easy as you choose them to be.

You can make all sorts of bread and they don’t all have to be heavy, heafty and guilt ridden with calories. Think quality over quantity and you will see how it can still be part of your balanced diet, without the overprocessed food guilt.

My top tips: –

  • Use quality ingredients, or choose quality from the ones you can afford.
  • Learn to make a sourdough starter. It educates you about what to look for and just how robust it really is. Killing a starter isn’t that easy to do. Only mould or bacteria means the end for a starter. Yes you can go on holiday and leave it in the fridge, it will be fine! Recipe on the website.
  • Check any dried yeast you use is in date and active.
  • Do learn to adapt recipes that suit you and those you are making for. Try out gluten free recipes, switch dairy butter for plant butter. These can help you discover something fresh that you can all eat and enjoy.
  • Alter salt amounts to what you prefer.
  • Don’t over complicate things.
  • Try a recipe as it is written the first time you make it, but don’t be afraid to be flexible with proving times that get it to work with the temperature of your house. Make it work to your advantage around your daily schedule and responsibilities.
  • Do read my baking tips, motivation, baking motivation and other parts of the book before you get baking. You may just save yourself some time and disasters.
  • Allow yourself to make mistakes, but don’t allow it to stop you learning from it and trying again.
  • Experiment by adding flavours that you like, once you’ve got the hang of it. Explore local mills and the flours they offer.
  • Don’t add anything unless it needs to be in there for your flavours.
  • Don’t be afraid of the ‘knocking back’ of your lovely airy bread before a second prove in yeasted dough recipes. The second rise will be stronger and burst up higher in the oven. You’ll see!
  • You are not a bad person if you turn out some rubbish loaves. Pick a different recipe and try again. Everyone can make bread.

So that’s the premise of the book in a nutshell. My motivation behind it was to show everyone how I make breads, in my way and how you can replicate this in the easiest way. I also wanted to bake different kinds of bread for a family member that was excluded from choosing from the full array in a bakery, due to food allergy restrictions. This means I taught myself different techniques to make different doughs, loaves and non gluten breads. The result being the lovely smiley faces of my family and of my customers, at my market stall. They get to enjoy all sorts of bread. And many of them are now making it The Doorstep Baker way too.

Order your copy today View and order here

“This book has great advice for a successful bake and encouraged me to take the leap to make my own sourdough starter and successfully baked my first sourdough and focaccia“, Judith, 2025.