Hi, I’m George — and no, I didn’t grow up baking with my grandparents or training in a professional kitchen. In fact, I was a very fussy eater for most of my life.
When I first went to university, my diet consisted almost entirely of sausage, chips, and beans from the canteen. After a while, it dawned on me that this probably wasn’t sustainable — or particularly grown-up — and that if I wanted to eat better, I was going to have to learn how.
Moving away from home and into a student house was where I first started trying to cook properly. Most of those early attempts were… not great. But they were often still better than the majority of my friends’ cooking, which usually involved instructions like “put in the oven at 180°C for 15 minutes” being considered too difficult.
Over time, I started experimenting more. Different ingredients, different techniques, different approaches. What I found was that I’d sometimes throw a bunch of things together and make something genuinely good — and then have absolutely no idea how to recreate it.
It didn’t help that it’s taken me around 40 years to start liking tomatoes.
My wife kept telling me the obvious solution: write things down. Eventually, that turned into the idea of putting recipes on a website — partly so I wouldn’t forget what I’d done, and partly so I could keep improving them over time.
BirkyBaker is the result of that. It’s a place to document what I make, what works, what doesn’t, and how my cooking continues to evolve — including how surprisingly difficult it is to photograph a Yorkshire pudding.
Nothing fancy, no professional background — just real food, real experiments, and recipes that are written because I actually want to be able to make them again.
BirkyBaker is a small, growing collection of home baking recipes, with a focus on bread and pies.
Right now, the site is in its early stages and new recipes are being added over time. The aim is to build up a practical, reliable set of bakes that work in a real home kitchen — from simple loaves to classic pies.
Recipes are written as they’re tested and made again, using clear steps and straightforward ingredients. As the site develops, content will continue to improve, expand, and become more detailed.
BirkyBaker is very much a work in progress, but it’s built with care and a long-term love of baking in mind.