The Thrifty Baker: Shop, Bake & Eat on a Budget (Hermine Dossou)

The Thrifty Baker presents 65 delicious, affordable and impressive recipes, complete with gluten-free options, plus advice, tips and hacks covering many areas of shopping, baking and cooking in general.

Filled with clever ideas and useful features, the book is written with a realism and empathy that comes from the heart, from a lived experience. It isn’t just a book of great recipes, but an essential manual for anyone baking today.

Since appearing on The Great British Bake Off in 2020 and wowing the judges, Hermine Dossou’s career has gone from strength to strength, but life hasn’t always been easy.

As a single mother to her son Steven, she had to learn to budget and make her income stretch, especially when he was young and she could only work part-time. With a limited income, but determined that they should both eat good, nutritious food, she learned how to shop, cook, bake and eat on a tight budget. This included making savings on ingredients and cooking equipment, devising clever, thrifty recipes, planning weekly menus, and running her oven as efficiently as possible to save on energy bills. 
 
In the process Hermine has developed a wide-ranging ethos for baking on a budget, a set of values, habits and skills that have at their heart a belief that we can all eat flavourful, nutritious food without spending a fortune on ingredients and energy. And crucially also the knowledge that making our own bakes – whether that’s bread, pies, quiches, desserts, cakes or snacks – can save us considerable sums when times are tough.
 
Hermine still uses these skills to this day and would now like to share with you everything she’s learned about baking on a budget.