Richard Bertinet

Richard Bertinet is a French baker, teacher, and founder whose work is centred on bread, dough, and direct instruction. He is the founder, baker, and teacher of The Bertinet Kitchen, a Bath cookery school built around practical bread making and the discipline of flour, fermentation, heat, patience, and oven control. His approach treats bread as a craft learned through handwork first, with judgement developing through repeated mixing, shaping, proving, baking, and careful attention to dough as it changes.

Bertinet’s baking foundation comes from training at Grand Moulin de Paris and an apprenticeship in Brittany. That background established the technical habits that continue through his work: understanding flour, reading dough, and balancing structure, air, and flavour. The same practical discipline later carried into restaurant operations, where he worked as Operations Director at Novelli Group of restaurants. He later founded Dough Co., extending bread’s basic materials and methods into entrepreneurship while keeping bread at the centre.

Teaching became a defining part of his career. At The Bertinet Kitchen, he leads students through bread making in a setting shaped by direct practice and repetition, where confidence is built through doing rather than abstraction. The school’s identity remains closely tied to artisan bread and bread-making instruction. Bertinet’s teaching also extends beyond Bath through his bread-making course work with BBC Maestro, bringing the same hands-on emphasis to a wider audience.

He is also a Gozney brand ambassador, a role aligned with dough and high-heat baking. The Bertinet Kitchen was founded in 2005 and became the working home for his teaching. Since September, Bertinet has also been its owner and operator. The school is recognised as an ICSA Accredited Cookery School member, an ICSA Academy, and a Centre of Excellence, but its core identity remains practical: students learn by watching, feeling, repeating, and tracking the small changes that determine the final loaf.

Bertinet’s signature work includes sourdough pizzas and cinnamon buns, both of which reflect his focus on handling, fermentation, and flavour. His sourdough pizzas depend on lift and dough management, while his cinnamon buns show the enriched side of his baking, combining spice, sweetness, and care. His signature work also includes Sourdough Gin and The Bertinet 20th Anniversary Gin, which carry the same sense of craft into product making.

Across all of it, bread remains the central reference point, whether in teaching, baking, or product development. His career includes founder, baker, and teacher at The Bertinet Kitchen, bread-making course teacher at BBC Maestro, baker apprentice in Brittany, Operations Director at Novelli Group of restaurants, and founder of Dough Co. The through-line is consistent: French technical grounding, working-baker responsiveness, and instruction that makes bread legible through practice.