Strothe Carolin - Natural Baking

Jamie Oliver

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Why we are writing this book
We both associate childhood very strongly with special, carefree times spent outside in the garden. We enjoyed wonderful experiences, such as scoffing fruit from the berry bushes in summer and, in the autumn, gathering up old apple varieties, picking juicy pears, or collecting mushrooms in the woods. From an early age we learned from our parents and grandparents when each kind of fruit and vegetable was in season and how they could be used in cooking and baking. At the weekend a delicious cake would invariably be baked using freshly harvested fruit from the garden, so our intimate connection to nature began pretty much from birth. And nowadays we still love to unwind from the hustle and bustle of everyday life by baking timeless classic cakes at the weekend, or by giving them a new interpretation and enjoying the results with family and friends.

From early on we learned when different fruit and vegetables were in season.

The health aspect of cooking also plays a big role in our recipes. As we grow older and our daily lives become more stressful, naturally we become more interested in our bodies and general health. This interest links to the topic of nutrition and its significant impact on our well-being. We have been focused on using natural ingredients in our food for over 15 years now, so eating healthily has become second nature and doesnt feel like an effort.

Once you begin to look more closely into nutrition, it soon becomes clear that the highly processed foods that are so ubiquitous are not only deficient in terms of natural ingredients, they also foster an unhealthy diet. Government research in 2017 found that almost 10 per cent of people in the UK rarely make food from scratch, and only 19 per cent cook from scratch each day. Shared meals are no longer an integral part of our daily routine as we eat at home far less often. Instead, people often grab food while they are on the move, eating when they happen to see something that looks delicious, or simply to fulfil a craving. In a dynamic world where the key preoccupations are work, stress, or leisure activities the motto is quick and easy. Many kids no longer learn how to cook from scratch. In the past, girls were taught how to cook in domestic science lessons or grandmothers passed on their knowledge to the next generation. Today, too often this knowledge isnt passed on.

And yet the natural world continues to provide a diverse and rich cornucopia of ingredients that are incomparable when it comes to flavour. All too often ingredients are gradually being forgotten thanks to industrial-scale mass production. For understandable reasons, industrial production focuses on the ingredients that are easiest to use and which can be processed most efficiently to generate the largest revenues. High quantities of sugar and fat are often added to conceal the substandard quality of other ingredients. This situation is what prompted us to design and write this book. We want to restore our relationship with natural ingredients. Of course, theres an element of nostalgia involved, too, but, most importantly, it has become very clear that we are harming ourselves and exploiting our planet with our current lifestyle, sometimes with disastrous and incalculable consequences. We would like our book to make a contribution (however small) to changing this.