Richard Bertinet

The Path

French baking training at Grand Moulin de Paris and apprenticeship in Brittany set the foundation for Richard Bertinet’s work. The mill and the bakehouse both matter in this lineage: flour knowledge, early starts, repeated mixing, shaping, proving, and baking. The craft depends on reading dough as it changes under the hands, judging when structure, air, and flavour are in balance. Restaurant operations brought the baker’s discipline into a broader service context when Richard Bertinet worked as Operations Director at Novelli Group of restaurants. That role moved the work beyond the bench and into the coordination of restaurant systems. Entrepreneurship followed with Dough Co. (from 2000), where the same basic materials and methods of bread remained central to the business. Teaching now carries the trade forward through Richard Bertinet’s roles as founder; baker and teacher of The Bertinet Kitchen (since 2005), and bread-making course teacher of BBC Maestro. The constant is practical transmission: French technical grounding, the responsiveness of a working baker, and instruction that makes bread legible through handling rather than abstraction.

The Work Today

The Bertinet Kitchen, founded as a Bath cookery school in 2005, is the working setting for Richard Bertinet as founder and teacher; since September, he is also its owner and operator. The school’s work is built around direct practice: flour on the table, dough in the hands, heat in the oven, and students learning that confidence comes from repetition as much as explanation. Accreditation places the school within a recognised cookery education framework. The Bertinet Kitchen is an ICSA Accredited Cookery School member, as well as an ICSA Academy and Centre of Excellence. Those designations sit alongside the practical identity of the place: bread making learned by watching, feeling, repeating, and tracking small changes in the bowl and on the bench. Bread making and artisan bread are the specialist ground. In teaching, Richard Bertinet gives students signature dough techniques for light, flavourful sourdough pizzas, where lift, handling, and fermentation management carry the result. The school also includes cinnamon buns among his signature work, describing them as his famously indulgent cinnamon buns — enriched dough, spice, sweetness, and the immediate appeal of a bake made with care. The teaching also extends beyond Bath. Richard Bertinet teaches a bread-making course at BBC Maestro, taking the same practical instruction to a wider audience, and he is a Gozney brand ambassador, a role aligned with dough, heat, and high-temperature baking.

Signature

The signature work includes Richard Bertinet’s Sourdough Gin, The Bertinet 20th Anniversary Gin, cinnamon buns, and sourdough pizzas. The range keeps bread and dough at the centre: fermentation as a reference point, an anniversary bottling, enriched dough, and sourdough pizza shaped by handling and heat.

In Their Words “It’s a gin made with the same care and craft as good bread.”

Acclaim

Recognition for Richard Bertinet includes James Beard Award for Baking and Dessert for Dough, Gold for Richard Bertinet’s Sourdough Gin (2026), BBC Food Champion of the Year (2010), IACP cookery book of the year for Dough, and Julia Child Award for Best First Book for Dough. The record ties together baking, writing, teaching, and product work, with bread remaining the central craft reference.