THE BAKER'S DOZEN - INTERVIEW WITH PRESTO

With the opening of Penhaligon's Bakery (that's the festive gift shop, don't you know), we've turned our noses and stomachs towards London's impressive pool of baking talent to create recipes inspired by our very own scents. One of these is Presto, a London-based creative studio that specialises in design-led cake and chocolates. We sat down with founder Lauren Duncan to discuss her delicious creations and her baking journey so far.

Before moving into food, I was a womenswear designer, most recently for Uniqlo in Tokyo. When I moved back to London in 2016, I realised I might be better suited to working in something more hands on so I gave myself six months to try out baking. I had no formal training to realise any of the ideas I had at the time, so I ended up working in restaurants and bakeries around London to build up a base of techniques. With Presto, I wanted to create a brand under which I could design very freely. It’s a completely personal project, led entirely by my own taste and design sensibilities.

I start early around 7:00 h – maybe I’ve been conditioned by years of early starts, but I find I do my best work in the mornings. If I’m sketching or designing for a client that day, I’ll always do that first when it’s quiet and before I even look at an email. One of the things I like most about my work is that every day is completely different, depending on what I have on that week. Most likely I’ll also be out delivering something around London at some point during the day, whether it be a cake or samples for clients.

I tend not to look to cakes or food in general for inspiration. I’m more drawn to things like jewellery, antique tableware, and textiles. I’ll sketch shapes and forms very loosely in pencil and then move on to practical decoration tests, most of which don’t work out but instead lead me on to other ideas. It’s a lot of trial and error until I land on something I’m excited by. Generally, my inspiration and research process has stayed much the same as when I was designing clothes, only the medium I’m working with has changed.

My very first baking job was at a tiny sourdough bakery in Bermondsey. The space was within another bakery so had no windows or airflow to speak of. This made the smell of the bread baking quite intoxicating. We’d start at 2:00 h, loading loaves shaped the previous day into a deck oven for hours and hours. I will say that the smell of the bread baking would make those early mornings slightly less painful. Although I don’t work with bread now, I truly don’t believe there is a better smell in the world.

Mince pies! I always end up tweaking my recipe slightly every year but currently it’s a wholewheat based rough-puff pastry case with a quince and bergamot mincemeat filling. A chef friend of mine told me recently that he grates salted butter onto the mincemeat before topping the pies with their pastry lids, so that’s on my list to try this year.​ ​