Our ingredients
Few ingredients, each with a clear job.
When a recipe has only a handful of components, every one of them shows. A bread made from flour, water and salt cannot hide a dull flour; a croissant cannot hide a watery butter.
This page explains what each core ingredient contributes and what we look for when choosing it.
Protein content determines how much gluten a flour can form. Bread flours typically sit higher in protein, giving dough the strength to hold gas through a long fermentation. Pastry and cake flours are lower, for tenderness.
Wholegrain flours include the bran and germ, adding flavour, colour and nutrients but also absorbing more water. Heritage and ancient grains such as spelt or einkorn bring distinctive flavours with a more delicate gluten.
Freshness matters too: wholegrain flour contains natural oils that can turn stale over time, so it is best used within a few months.
Butter is roughly 80–84% fat, with the rest mostly water and milk solids. Butters with a higher fat content are more pliable when cold, which makes them easier to laminate into croissant dough without cracking.
Milk, cream and eggs enrich doughs like brioche, adding tenderness, richness and a deeper golden colour. Cultured butter adds a gentle tang that works beautifully in pastry.
A sourdough starter is simply flour and water colonised by wild yeasts and bacteria. Kept with regular feedings, it leavens bread more slowly than commercial yeast but rewards that patience with flavour, better keeping quality and a characteristic open crumb.
Good dark chocolate should taste of cocoa rather than sugar. Sugars do more than sweeten: they feed yeast, keep cakes moist and caramelise into colour. Brown sugar adds molasses depth; honey adds floral notes and softness.
Fruit, nuts and spices are most flavourful in their season. Berries in summer, apples and pears in autumn, citrus in winter and rhubarb in spring give a natural rhythm to what is worth baking.
Salt seasons dough, tightens gluten and slows fermentation slightly. Water quality and temperature both affect dough; temperature is one of the main tools a baker has to control fermentation.
Quality is about suitability as much as reputation. We ask practical questions:
Ingredients that pass those tests earn a place in the recipe.
Ingredients work as a team. A wholegrain loaf may need extra water and a touch of honey to stay soft; a rich chocolate cookie needs salt and a crisp edge to avoid tasting heavy; a fruit tart needs a buttery shell to frame bright, acidic fruit.
Balance is the goal: no single ingredient shouting over the rest, and every element doing something you would miss if it were gone.
Read longer essays in the journal, or explore how they come together in our breads.