Meet the Market Drayton baker who set up his own business during lockdown and is now sharing his "love letter to ginger" recipe book
Andy Walker’s ultimate dream is to open a traditional bakery in his home town of Market Drayton - but for now he's writing his first cookbook and it's full of his favourite spice.
“I want it to be like bakeries should be; a warm, comforting place where you can meet up with friends, share a coffee and a pastry or a bit of lunch; a meeting place in the centre of town.
“Bakeries were once the cornerstone of our towns but we seem to have lost that a bit,” he explains.
But for now, he is getting the ball rolling and testing the water by writing his first cookbook and sharing some of his favourite recipes.
“This is the first step and a way of seeing if there is any interest as well as generating a bit of money towards it,” explains Andy, who set up a business delivering sweet treats by post during the pandemic.
He describes GINGER: BRICK BY BRICK #1 Building The Gingerbread Bakery, which contains more than 60 recipes celebrating one of this versatile and much-loved spice, as his “love letter to ginger”.
Andy hopes it will help home bakers rediscover ginger in new and exciting ways.
“It’s all about ginger – so if you don’t like ginger, you’re probably not going to like the book, but if you do, you’ll probably love the book,” he says.
“It’s all the sort of things that, if I did open a bakery, I would have on the menu.
“It would probably have a ginger theme because Market Drayton is the home of gingerbread and it would be nice to have a nod towards that,” adds the 55-year-old.
Over the past 30 years, the father of two has collected cookbooks and attended dozens of courses, helping him to hone his skills, and interspersed with the recipes are his own food memories and stories.
“I have a recipe book I’ve always kept at home – it’s something I had always imagined handing down to my kids, a recipe book of what we have eaten as we have grown up.
