The Artisan Bakery School

We both thoroughly enjoyed our day spent baking with Dragan and Penny - it was great fun and we learnt a lot. The course is very hands-on and we made loads of tasty sourdough bread to take away, including baguettes, white, brown and granary loafs and two kinds of rye breads.

Penny and Dragan really know their stuff. It was especially useful to be able to get advice and be shown and practice techniques such as proper kneading, shaping and scoring. We covered a lot during the course but the eBooks provided help you to remember all the information when you get home.

As well as being suitable for beginners, this course would be good if you've got a bit more experience. If you've experimented with sourdough breads with slightly hit-and-miss results, then this course is ideal for understanding where you might be going wrong and the best techniques to use.

I thoroughly enjoyed my baking day. I am a sourdough baking novice, although I love to eat it! Dragan and Penny are excellent teachers with so much talent and enthusiasm. I baked baguette, which I enjoyed with the excellent home made lunch, spelt, malted wheat (granary by any other name) and a fig and caraway rye loaf. I came away with all this wonderful bread, my sourdough starter (which I have named Doris) and my homework which I will endeavour to make into an acceptable loaf. I have wanted to learn how to bake sourdough for a while and am so pleased that I was able to start my journey with the help and support of Dragan and Penny and their excellent books. I would recommend them to anyone.

If like me you really love the idea of making your own bread, with more natural ingredients - but the results so far a a bit all over the shop. If you bought a book and still... meh... Then this is the answer. Dragan and Penny are both the most welcoming of tutors, their home is idyllic, the bakery a sympathetic extension of their kitchen. Dragan is patience and thoughtful in ensuring you understand each step of the way. And quickly identified where my problems lay as a baker. I'm too Jamie Oliver, and need to be more Mary Berry. More than this though learning to knead properly is something I now value so much. Understanding how to play with quantities, temperature and time to get far more consistent results, and fit into the time you have, is a bit of a revelation. And some weeks later and I am both a little surprised, and delighted, to turn out results at home that pretty much match those on the day. Dragan's son joined me on my workshop, and the day simply rushed by in learning, chatting, laughing, and ended up with me thinking I was with friends more that teachers. I was going to a wedding locally so stayed overnight with them - Penny also runs one of the finest B&B's I've stayed in - and have reviewed the accommodation too on TripAdvisor - with photos of the bread, go look, I'm still impressed. And all this in a beautiful part of the world to visit, so it is well worth combining a course with sleeping in the most comfortable bed ever, in a nurturing environment, with charming people and a real injection of happy memories and great skills. Simply put, I loved it.