About me

My ruling passions include bread baking, travel, writing, photography and building things. Always curious about food, I’ve been known to spend days or weeks working to arrive at a perfect recipe. Sometimes it’s an unusual technique or ingredient I’m playing with; sometimes it’s a food memory I’m looking to recreate. For more than 25 years, I’ve been recording and tweaking my recipes.

After rebuilding our Seattle house to accommodate a bigger and better kitchen for a burgeoning family, I took the ultimate baker’s challenge in 2004 and built a woodfired oven in the back yard. The oven at Chez Bullhog resembles a little Italian villa, right down to the fresco painted above the counter to one side.

For 6 years now, I’ve been baking breads and pizzas in the outdoor oven, and am constantly experimenting with making other dishes in the fire. I’ve more recently put it all together in a website, www.woodfiredkitchen.com. As Sortachef, I try to combine a story – often a travel story – with a food, a technique and my own brand of photography. Many of my offerings are woodfired, but to my readers’ relief they come with conventional alternatives as well.

Cooking Influences

Tom Stobart, Harold McGee, Julia Child