Dear PANARIANS all,

The 2012 programme is now on PANARY’s website for all to see.   I wish to draw to your attention some of its features and changes.
The main news item is the price reduction of all two-day courses.  As an aftermath of the recession, and now during this current and prolonged austerity period, the two-day courses have slumped in popularity while the one-dayers have gained.  As a committed teacher, and a person who has the good fortune of loving his work, the decline in the two-dayers has been a sadness for me.  It is on the two-day course that a student can really get his or her teeth into whatever baking it is that is the theme of the course.  With the price reduction (£60, meaning they now cost £310)) I am hoping to draw people back to them.Continue Reading

Dear Panarians,

All PANARY course dates for 2011 are now on the website – www.panary.co.uk – and with this newsletter I can point out a few changes.

Two theme courses have been deleted: Flatbreads and the two-day Sponges & pre-ferments. Students can still encounter a range of flatbreads by attending the Italian and Wood-fired Oven courses.  The Sponges course was less popular than I expected, probably because it was an advanced level course and not thought of as mainstream. However, work with sponges of all types does occur on both the British and continental courses (including French), and a student who really wants to go into sponges deeply could request them on any three-day course programme.

A general shift in the programming that reflects our post-recession times is that I am holding more one-day courses and less of the two-day.  New one-day courses are: French, British, and Sourdough. For years these have been in the two-day format, and it is now an exciting challenge for me to present these themes in the one-day format.  It will take me a while to get used to hearing myself say…”and here is one that I made earlier…”Continue Reading

The big thing to crow about here is the recently renovated PANARY website. Get along to www.panary.co.uk , and have a bit of a click around, and see if you agree that I am now entirely modernised.

New course this year (2010 programme) is Sponges & Pre-ferments. While this course really should be thought of as an advanced course, it remains open to anybody to attend without any pre-requisites, as is the PANARY way. The pitch of the course is to give such an in-depth view of sponges and ferments of all types that we cross the national boundaries, examining and making from the Continent alongside Britain. This is an all-yeast course, no sourdough in our family of sponges. The first course in May got off to a steady start, and the course programme seemed to suit very well. Next opportunities are July 13-14, and October 23-24.Continue Reading