Food
The great New Year bake-off
Roy Levy, head baker of Gail's Artisan Bakery, on how to make it a sweet Rosh Hashanah
September 13, 2012 10:13
By, Victoria Prever
2 min read
Roy Levy, head baker of Gail's Artisan Bakery, on how to make it a sweet Rosh Hashanah
September 13, 2012 10:13By, Victoria Prever
Every September since Israeli cake maestro Roy Levy was lured to Britain by the Gail’s bakery empire, he finds himself in demand.
“As New Year approaches, a queue of customers come to me with their honey cakes, asking: ‘What’s gone wrong?’” he explains. “Some ask why their cakes are sinking, others why their cake is dry. And I have to tell them the main problem is their recipe — most are from the eastern European tradition, and not my idea of a honey cake at all.”
Levy’s own Rosh Hashanah cake for Gail’s is very different to the typical gingerbread-style Ashkenazi version. It is loaded with more honey than most recipes handed down from our mothers and bubbes, perhaps because the sweetener was a rare luxury in the shtetl. “I use organic orange blossom honey — but there is more to making a great honey cake than just the honey,” he says.
“I went through a lot of experimentation adapting the recipe I used in Tel Aviv for London,” he says. “It is to do with the flour here and also the butter, which has a different percentage of water. And it is important how long you cream the mixture for, as well as how long you bake the cake.”
In the UK, Levy only has one honey cake to worry about for the holidays. “If I was still in Israel I would be trying to keep up with the demand for so many more varieties — honey and pears, honey with poppy seeds, even challah laced with honey and raisins.”
