Contact
Reaching the desk
We are a small operation and we read everything, which does mean replies are slower than we would like. Sending to the right address below gets you answered considerably faster.
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General enquiries
Questions about a piece, a schedule that is not behaving in your kitchen, or anything that does not fit the boxes below.
[email protected] Usually answered within a week -
Pitches
Bakery visits, mill profiles, and pieces from bakers working in conditions we do not have. Send two paragraphs on the idea and one line on why you are the person to write it — not a full draft.
[email protected] We reply to all pitches, yes or no -
Corrections
If a timing, ratio or temperature we published is wrong, we want to know quickly. Corrections are made on the piece itself with a dated note, not quietly.
[email protected] Read daily -
The Saturday Dispatch
Send a blank email to subscribe. We add addresses by hand, so it may take a few days before the first one arrives. Reply unsubscribe at any time and you are removed the same week.
[email protected] One email, most Saturdays
Commissioned work
We commission a handful of pieces each issue. Rates are flat, paid on filing rather than on publication, and we cover reasonable travel within the lower North Island for bakery and mill visits.
What tends to get commissioned:
- Time spent on someone else's bench, written as observation rather than profile
- Grain and milling pieces where you have access we do not
- Baking in conditions that break the usual assumptions — very humid, very cold, very high, or without an oven that holds temperature
- A failure documented properly, with enough detail that a reader can avoid it
What does not: recipe roundups, listicles, anything built around a product launch, and pieces that assume a Northern Hemisphere calendar without saying so.
Where we are
The desk is in the Aro Valley, Wellington. We do not keep a public office or a shopfront — test bakes happen in a domestic kitchen, which is rather the point of the whole exercise. Post can be arranged by email if you need to send something physical.
On timings and your kitchen. The most common message we get is some version of “I followed the schedule and it was underproofed.” Nine times out of ten the answer is room temperature, not technique. If you write in, include the temperature your kitchen was sitting at and roughly how long the dough had — that alone usually solves it.
Press and syndication
Happy to discuss republication of individual pieces. Send the specifics to [email protected] — what you want to run, where, and whether it is in full or extracted. We generally say yes where the piece is credited and linked.