Baker Bleu

The many exciting roads to bread glory and the best ways to enjoy it from a powerhouse couple who threw in their corporate jobs to realise their bakery dream.


Baker Bleu The Book is a cookbook of sorts. At least, it has 70-plus delicious, inventive recipes for anyone who wants to emulate the best bread and Roman-style sourdough pizza bases in Melbourne. And those who are sandwich fiends (like Neil Perry), or who aspire to resourcefulness with leftover bread, or use croissant dough to make simple filled pastries at home (and prudently leave the whole croissant palaver to the experts). Or just crave the bakery's now cultish vegan challah (born of the fact its first low-grade food licence did not allow them to work with eggs). But there is more to it too. It's also a story of what's possible when you wake up one day and decide there's more to life than the soulless corporate grind. And you sign on with pluck and ambition to bake it till you make it.

About the Author

Nicknamed blue as a kid, Mike Russell spent his twenties seeking that thing that would make him tick. Advertising wasn't it. Discovering baking at 25 was the aha! moment, and he moved around honing his skills with leading bakers across Sydney and Melbourne. In 2016, he and his then-banker wife Mia Russell sold their house, upset their parents, and threw everything they had at a tiny shopfront in Elsternwick, swapping blue for bleu because it sounds gourmet, right? Eight years later the couple are full time in their business - which turns out 40,000 items a week, and regularly sells out. They divide their time between two sites in Melbourne and a shiny outpost in Sydney's Double Bay.