My Life in Baking : Fifty years on

Clive Mellum has been a master baker for 50 years, and is responsible for having taught literally hundreds of bakers, professional as well as amateurs.

He started becoming really interested in doughs and fermentation at the age of about eleven. And even if I carried on baking for another 50 years, I would still be learning every day. There is so much to learn, no one can ever say they know it all.

Despite his humility he is widely regarded by many of Britain's best bakeries as being one of the foremost influences in the Real Bread revolution that is sweeping across the country. Having been taught the art of fermentation through the 1960s only to experience its decline through a lack of understanding of its importance, Clive set out on a mission to work with the independent milling industry

to resurrect this forgotten art in family bakeries.

He now works as an independent bread consultant, imparting 50 years of knowledge to an eager and ever-increasing audience.

The author leads his readers through his Basic and Advanced workshops in baking. Besides a great variety of recipes, the book offers background information on craft baking in Britain and abroad, and relates anecdotes from a lifetime of bread making.

The man's a walking encyclopaedia of bread.

David Jones, Manna from Devon, Kingswear