…especially when I’m proving croissants to bake for breakfast.

Croissants make me optimistic. That’s really why I bake them; for the sweet, buttery smell of fresh hope and possibility in the kitchen. When you open the oven door and get that first waft of warm pastry, it’s so uplifting, you feel you could (almost) love the whole world. And then of course there’s the colour; all that delicate gilding of the pastry layers, shading into coppers and burnished bronze, and fitting so serendipitously with my chrysanthemums and favourite wicker baskets.

For Viennoiserie class dates click here. £175 gets you a whole day of baking and a beautiful box of croissants, brioche and pastries to take home.

The aroma of a sourdough croissant is most alluring of all, infinitely worth all the patience required to prepare leaven and poolish overnight, and steadily build up the laminations over the next day by turning and folding the dough in a beguiling series of letter folds and book folds. I leave the detrempe (laminated dough) overnight in the fridge again, then roll it out early in the morning, to form the croissants, egg wash them, prove them and bake them for breakfast.

Once you have mastered the dough, there are endless ways of using it to make sweet or savoury pastries, galettes and tarts. But nothing beats a warm, fresh-baked croissant enjoyed with nothing more than a large cafe au lait!