‘As a boy I didn’t know bagels were Jewish! Now I make the best challah’

Nanny Mu's bread pudding is a recipe close to Dakota-Levy's heart (Picture: Trevennon Dakota-Levy)[Missing Credit]

Dakota-Levy honours this relationship by including one of her recipes – Muriel’s bread pudding – in the book (recipe here). It’s a recipe that is close to his heart. “The first time I saw her make it, I was at a loss for words,” he recalls. As his grandmother emptied an “entire jar of mixed spice” into the batter, he derided her wastefulness. “She said, ‘no, you need it for the flavour. There’s no point using it in small batches if you’re not going to taste it’”.

“I can remember it as clear as day,” he says, explaining that it’s a lesson which has stayed with him. “It works, and it's right. If you’re going to do it, do it – that's what I get from her. So now, if I’m going to add an ingredient, I’m going to add it!”

It wasn’t just his love of cooking that Dakota-Levy inherited from nanny Mu. “She was really my education when it came to Judaism,” he says. Despite this – and her general prowess in the kitchen – he deems her challah recipe “dodgy”. “Let's call a duck a duck,” he says. “What she was making was not challah – it had milk in it, it had butter in it, it was a brioche!”

His challah recipe, on the other hand, is a source of great naches. “I baked hundreds of loaves while I was developing it,” he says. “I was losing sleep, because every time it wasn't as I wanted it, I would be sat there itching to try the next little tweak I had thought of. So I'm very proud of my challah recipe, because to me it is the best challah – obviously I'm gonna say that.”

Dakota-Levy says he is "very proud" of his challah recipe (Picture: Trevennon Dakota-Levy)[Missing Credit]

Developing his own challah recipe is emblematic of the incredible journey Dakota-Levy has been on over the last nine-or-so years. Despite the fact he “wasn’t raised religious at all”, he now navigates a “triangle” of Reform, Kabbala, and Chabad affiliation. “I learned, through attending more and more services and sort of growing my, I guess, ideology of spiritualism and Judaism, that all the things I knew about myself – my ethics, my core values – were reaffirmed. I saw them reflected in the organised side of Judaism.”

Explaining how this has impacted his work, he later adds: “When I make challah, I think back on centuries of Jewish women around the world who are making the challah for Shabbat, or I think of manna in the Bible… I find that really grounding.”

Another step on his journey to reconnect with his Jewish heritage was adopting nanny Mu’s maiden name, Levy, which he did last year, shortly before she passed away in October. “I wanted to have something of hers to connect us,” he explains. “But I also think it's really important at the minute… well, and for the last few years, to be very visibly Jewish.”

It’s this Jewish pride which will inform his next cookbook – Taim (Hebrew for tasty) – which he is already working on. “It’s all about taking core Jewish dishes and adapting the recipes, bringing them into this century with new flavours, new twists – celebrating the recipes but keeping the tradition and the core of their origin,” he says, adding: “I haven’t even announced it on my socials yet because it took me five years to write this one – I need a break!”

Semlor buns, a Swedish bake, are an example of what you can expect in Baketisserie (Picture: Trevennon Dakota-Levy)[Missing Credit]

As for Baketisserie, with recurring ingredients and techniques, the recipes are intentionally designed around the convenience of the home-cook. “I wanted to make a book of specialist bakes that are well-tested and accessible,” he says. “If you try the babka and you master it, then you can try the Semlor buns.”

“I don’t want anyone to think they can’t do something,” he says, adding that nothing should intimidate the new baker… apart from kubaneh – a spiral-shaped bread of Yemenite-Jewish origin, which even he has yet to master. “Once it’s done, I think it will be the showstopper of my next book. I am adamant.”

The journey to Baketisserie was not easy, eliciting “blood, tears, and a few broken bones” (the latter occurring after he stood – and fell through – a glass table while trying to take a picture), but Dakota-Levy says it was all worth it, as he has achieved what he set out to do. “The feedback that I get is, ‘thanks so much, your recipes work!’ And I think, ‘they bloody-well should!’”