Gail's Artisan Bakery Cookbook: the stunningly beautiful cookbook from the ever-popular neighbourhood bakery

Product Information

Stir the eggs into the chocolate mixture, then fold in the flour, ensuring it’s completely combined to give a smooth, glossy batter. As the milk should be scalded before use, not just to activate the yeast but to give, as Johansen explains, a softer result, this seems a wise move to give greater depth of flavour. Cinnamon buns: have you fallen in love with this Scandi classic or do your loyalties lie with the chelsea, or indeed the Sally Lunn?

Ground cardamom is far less widely available here than in Scandinavia, but it's easy to do yourself, and I think gives a more mellow flavour. The classics, such as Johansen and Danish chef Trina Hahneman, author of The Scandinavian Cookbook, use a mixture of butter, sugar and cinnamon, as does Gail's Bakery. I wasn’t always a baker – I wasn’t even trained as one – but baking found me and I’m grateful to have discovered something I love doing. Stir in, then strain in the milk and stir together to make a soft dough which comes away from the edge of the bowl.Sweet buns are best eaten warm from the oven, which means that, unless you're lucky enough to live near a Nordic bakery, they're definitely worth a go at home. Only Prince and Lepard add anything else – vanilla and lemon zest respectively – but I don't want anything to distract from that gorgeous aromatic flavour. Johansen and Lepard both make bun cakes, rather than individual buns, which not only saves space in the oven but looks pleasingly impressive. I might be an expert in making a baker’s dozen of loaves, but when I went to bake just one it was a total failure. Leave the brownie to cool in its tin, then wrap the tin in cling film and chill overnight before cutting and devouring.

Plain flour is used in most Scandinavian recipes to give the buns a softer crumb, though Dan Lepard and Rose Prince, in her Pocket Bakery, both go for strong bread flour instead. Gail's choose light muscovado sugar and Lepard dark, both of which give a richer flavour than the standard caster.Described as a Scandinavian obsession, the cinnamon bun is made slightly differently throughout the Nordic region – but what all the recipes have in common is a fluffy richness and a generous helping of sweet spice. Half-Norwegian and all-round Scandinavian food expert Signe Johansen uses spelt flour in the recipe in her Scandilicious Baking book, explaining elsewhere that she finds this ancient grain "more digestible" than wheat. Melt the butter and chocolate in a small heatproof bowl fitted snugly over the top of a small pan of gently simmering water, making sure that its base doesn’t actually touch the water.

Stir carefully until melted and combined, remove the bowl from the pan and beat in the cocoa powder. Using half plain spelt and half wholemeal spelt gives her buns a lovely nutty flavour, but my testers find them "much too heavy". It is important that we continue to promote these adverts as our local businesses need as much support as possible during these challenging times. I've got a bit of a soft spot for the sticky bun, a treat with a whiff of the Billy Bunter about it. Sprinkling it on top of the butter, as Lepard and Gail's suggest, rather than mixing it all together, means that the filling seems to stay put better during baking.Since opening the first GAIL’s in 2005, the team behind London’s most inviting artisan bakery has been on a mission to bring high-quality, handmade bread and delicious vibrant food to local communities.

The Gail's Artisan Bakery Cookbook uses croissant dough, an innovation they credit to the great state of California: "and it's no exaggeration to say that our lives haven't been the same since". The American cinnamon roll, as far as I can tell, is similar, but generally iced and studded with fruit or nuts. In this, their first, stunning cookbook, GAIL’s take us through the day with inventive, fresh recipes. Tip on to a lightly oiled work surface (you don't want to add more flour to the mixture) and knead for five minutes – it will be very soft at first, but persevere. A skewer pushed into the centre should come out with large, gooey crumbs on it, but not coated in wet batter.Baking is a simple craft and I honestly believe that learning to bake involves rediscovering how to use a part of our body and brain – a reflex that we’ve neglected and forgotten about, but that we all have.