One’s a baker, the other is a butcher/chef, both look good in an apron. Brothers Tom and Henry Herbert seemingly have flour running through their veins, having grown up working in the family’s Cotswold bakery hobbshousebakery.co.uk.
In fact, when GH asked who would win in a bakeoff between the Fabulous Baker Brothers and Paul Hollywood the pair were pretty confident:
‘We would, because we’re actual bakers – I was working in our bakery last night,’ says Tom (below right). ‘Where’s Paul Hollywood’s bakery?’ he joked before adding: ‘Baking is tough if you want to make a career out of it, so there’s a lot of respect and admiration there.’
Here they share some bread baking hacks to make your bakes look and taste even better.
#1 Plait it
‘If you plait bread, it just always looks really amazing but is fairly straightforward – if you can plait hair, it’s just as easy.’ Tom
#2 Turn up the heat
‘Bake your bread at a high temperature so it gets a nice shiny crust.’ Henry
#3 Steam is king
‘Throw a cup of water in your oven at the beginning to make bread look really shiny and beautiful.’ Henry
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#4 Add a glaze
‘On a soft bap, burger bun or brioche, egg glazing is good. Don’t add it to a tin loaf for example though where you want a good crust.’ Henry
#5 Use a tin
‘To get a neat shape use a tin or a proving basket because the bread will come out the same shape.’ Tom
#6 Find a good recipe
‘There are so many out there and some can be tricky to follow or don’t work very well. We’ve tested our recipes to death! A good bake starts with a good recipe, basically.’ Tom
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#7 When in doubt… add flour
‘It’s really hard to over knead bread by hand but the way to bring it back is to add a bit of flour back into it – you’ll just end up with a slightly drier loaf.’ Tom
#8 …or beer
‘A drop of Stella Artois in a simple soda bread or Budweiser in a tiger loaf, for example. We’ve been working on some bread recipes that either use or are inspired by different beers for our Beer Bakery.’ Henry
The Beer Bakery pop-up in London is open 27-31 October
#9 Invest in a baking stone
‘Put it in your oven and it can live there: there’s not really anything that doesn’t benefit from having direct heat underneath. You can wave goodbye to soggy bottoms – Mary Berry would be very happy. It takes all your baking up a notch and not only that, but roast meat and veg seems to benefit from having that direct thermal mass underneath it, too.’ Tom
#10 Steal a hotel shower cap
‘A shower cap is really good because if you put it over the top of tin or bowl, the elastic holds it on and it puffs up, unlike clingfilm, which goes tight and touches the dough.’ Tom
‘And it’s a good excuse to stay in a hotel.’ Henry
#11 Buy in bulk
‘If you’re wanting to save money and you’re really into baking, get a 16 kilo sack of flour. You can get a sack from a mill for about £9, it will last all year is a good economy to sale.’ Henry
‘One of the biggest challenges people have with baking is inconsistency, and it puts people off – especially with flour, which looks the same but can actually be really different. So if you start with one whole sack and bake 18 plus loaves with it you’ve removed a massive inconsistency.’ Tom
RELATED: JAMES MARTIN: WHY YOU SHOULD NEVER BUY SUPERMARKET FLOUR
