Eat well, look after yourself and look after our planet

This website is about food, how to prepare it,  bake it, cook it  – and along the way giving tips on reducing waste, re-using, recycling. Make your kitchen a green kitchen.

This is a not-for-profit website

Bakermans

I should say something about the name of this website. It may seem obvious  why the name was chosen – but you would most likely not guess correctly. “Bakermans” is, in fact, my Dutch family name dating back to the 1600’s – and it has nothing to do with baking and probably comes from an old word for mid-wife. Transposing this to English just seemed so appropriate!

The Recipes

I started this website originally to be all about bread but have expanded this now to all foods. There is a big Mediterranean influence here, especially relating to France as we spend so many months there. The Dutch recipes are from my heritage but sadly I cannot say they are recipes from my oma/grandmother or mother. Some I have recreated from my memory of what we ate on the farm. I have credited websites as sources however the recipes are re-explained or modified in some way based on making it myself. Several recipes are adapted from multiple recipes with ingredients and methods that work for me and hopefully for you too.

Baking Bread

Most of my recipes have been adapted in quantity so that yeast is a packet of dried yeast. Where recipes originally used fresh yeast this has been converted to dried yeast but it is easy to convert them back again. Also I mostly use olive oil instead of butter, and fresh milk or yogurt and never dried milk powder. I use  butter milk when I have made my own butter! Where recipes originally used measuring cups, this has been converted to grammes or millilitres. By using a consistent method, preparation time for bread is reduced to under 10 minutes. Baking bread becomes a rhythm – it’s not a lot of work when you get going with it.

Without doubt, the most pleasing results are when preparing everything by hand but using a stand mixer can be a great time saver.  A bread machine can also be used just for mixing the dough rather than the full baking cycle.

All photographs on this site are of food from our own kitchen.

The Blog

The Bakermans Blog has tips and reviews. Occasionally, I will dive into history too and also now highlighting what part we can play in helping the environment starting from our kitchen. I am currently reviewing some of my recipes and I am hoping to eliminate any use of cling film within the next few weeks. In practice, I have already stopped using cling film myself with just a couple of exceptions that I still need to work on.

Reviews

Schär Bread Mix

4 June 2023

Schär Bread Mix  5/5 I have used a few gluten-free flours before and attempted my own mixes to make bread rolls. This was the

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Cooking and Baking Tips

Sourdough stirrer

9 June 2023

Make a Sourdough Stirrer So if you make sourdough, you are probably mixing your starter with a fork. I wanted to improve on this with

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Using Sourdough Discard

4 June 2023

Using Sourdough Discard Maintaining sourdough starter potentially creates more starter than you can use in baking bread but there are lots of ways of using

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Bread in the bible

20 May 2023

Bread in the bible During the time of Jesus, bread was made using simple and traditional methods many if which have been unchanged for centuries.

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