Gail's Artisan Bakery Cookbook: the stunningly beautiful cookbook from the ever-popular neighbourhood bakery

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Plain flour is used in most Scandinavian recipes to give the buns a softer crumb, though Dan Lepard and Rose Prince, in her Pocket Bakery, both go for strong bread flour instead.

They could be more to the American taste, however: my New York-raised tester favoured "the white fluffier ones that seemed to be baked all together in a really luscious, buttery, cinnamon swirl".The book isn’t about an abstract idea of creating the perfect cake or loaf, it’s about unleashing your creativity and discovering the pleasure that I’ve found in baking. In this, their first, stunning cookbook, GAIL’s take us through the day with inventive, fresh recipes.

Our cookbook isn’t about following a recipe for the perfect loaf or cake, it’s about unleashing the creativity within each of us as a home baker, in the comfort of our own homes and in the company of good friends and family.The world we live in doesn’t always allow us many ways to express ourselves, but baking is a humble but very beautiful way to do so. It's a bit leftfield though; Johansen's salt gives almost the same effect, though I don't think you need the vanilla-infused stuff she uses. Gail's choose light muscovado sugar and Lepard dark, both of which give a richer flavour than the standard caster. Tip on to a lightly oiled work surface (you don't want to add more flour to the mixture) and knead for five minutes – it will be very soft at first, but persevere.

Prince uses a flour-thickened vanilla custard, which is decadently rich, but not traditional enough for my purpose. A skewer pushed into the centre should come out with large, gooey crumbs on it, but not coated in wet batter. You can use an apricot jam glaze for a super-shiny finish, as Prince suggests, but I think the standard egg and sugar glaze is sufficient. This does make the buns lighter, but also slightly chewier, so I'm going to stick with the plain stuff. Scatter the pecan halves generously across the surface, and bake for anything between 15 and 30 minutes.

The Gail's Artisan Bakery Cookbook uses croissant dough, an innovation they credit to the great state of California: "and it's no exaggeration to say that our lives haven't been the same since".

Melt the butter and chocolate in a small heatproof bowl fitted snugly over the top of a small pan of gently simmering water, making sure that its base doesn’t actually touch the water. Then, once we’d got our recipes right, we insisted on testing them all with the most commonplace equipment we could get hold of. Arrange these in the tin, evenly spaced out, with the smallest in the middle, cover, and leave to prove for about 30 minutes, until the dough springs back when prodded gently. It starts with the essential how-to’s of mixing, kneading and shaping loaves before going on to offer over 100 varied savoury and sweet recipes inspired by the simplicity of cooking good bread and all the delicious mealtime possibilities around it. Stir in, then strain in the milk and stir together to make a soft dough which comes away from the edge of the bowl.

Waking up early, going to say hello to my doughs and sourdough starters, firing up the ovens before other people’s days have even begun… This is my idea of heaven. Only Prince and Lepard add anything else – vanilla and lemon zest respectively – but I don't want anything to distract from that gorgeous aromatic flavour. It turns out there’s nothing like a mediocre oven and a broken spatula to check that a recipe really works.