Blogger Spotlight: Michael Hawkes, The Bearded Bakery

Michael Hawkes is the author of Top 10 Baking Blog The Bearded Bakery. A digital marketer in the day and blogger by night, Mike bakes once a week – sharing his creations through his blog. We caught up with Mike to talk about blogging, his advice for PRs to do more with bakers and his favourite Crack Pie.

How would you describe your blog?
My blog started out as a place to document everything I baked so that my friends could bake the things I was posting on my other social media platforms. Over time it’s evolved into something that encapsulates two of the most important things in my life; food and travel (and traveling to eat food). Still primarily baking, it has little off-shoots into other things I love and enjoy, with food always at the centre. It shows how I bake, eat and explore.

What’s the best thing about being a baking blogger?
Getting to share everything I make with the people I care about. I only ever really eat a small portion of what I make myself. The main joy comes with sharing the love. Whether that’s my housemate or girlfriend getting to tuck into a slice of lemon meringue pie, my workmates enjoying my peanut butter cookies or someone receiving one of my Cake Care Packages filled with brownies.

How much does Great British Bake Off affect your blog?
Every year I intend to try and bake along each week, but it never really happens as I get side-tracked with other things from my ever-growing ‘to bake’ list. I started baking, and blogging, before I even really got in to bake off so I’ve always seen it as quite separate.

What’s your favourite bake to make?
That’s a question I get asked a lot, and I always struggle to answer it. The nature of blogging means you’re always striving to make new content, and for a food blog, that often means baking or cooking new things regularly. The best things get revisited from time to time though. I’m a big fan of my brownie recipe, as well as the giant bread ‘wreath’ I made last Christmas, but I think my favourite thing isn’t even something that’s currently on the blog: Crack Pie. I first made it after getting back from NYC last summer and while I’ve made it a couple of times, I’ve never managed to get good enough photos to warrant putting it up on the blog.

What’s the best bake you’ve ever eaten?
I’m a big fan of the cinnamon buns from London’s Nordic Bakery. They’re heavy, practically a meal, but the dough is so soft and full of cinnamon and cardamom. Similarly, the cinnamon buns from WB Samson in Oslo were so good that we had to re-visit them in the short visit we made to the city last year. I also love the humble doughnut, and I’m thoroughly enjoying the number of places popping up across the UK selling some excellent ones, from sourdough through to brioche.

What makes your blog successful?
I’ve never really viewed it as overly successful, but from the off I’ve always tried to keep it as genuine as possible. This means turning down a lot of the PR ‘opportunities’ I get in my inbox and focusing on content which I truly believe in. I think the main thing has been the support from my friends and family straight from the off, even if they didn’t necessarily understand it. Other than that, I’m just lucky that so many people love food as much as I do.

How do you like to work with PRs?
I’m fairly open to working with PRs in different ways, but the best ones are the ones where I get to actually do something creative and work a brand to create something completely new or different. A lot of PRs don’t really approach food & baking bloggers with much other than samples, and there’s a lot more that can be done. Email me, pick my brain and work together with me to create something special.

What’s a memorable campaign you’ve worked on?
This one isn’t even something that directly ties into the baking, as a lot of the baking campaigns are quite basic. It ties into my love of food and travel. OpenTable organised a chef’s table meal at Grain Store in Kings Cross. At the same time, they did something similar in New York, and after talking through an evening of seasonal produce we were tasked with writing an open letter about why the food scene in London is so good. This ended up being one of my favourite posts, as I could combine my passion for food and travel into one cohesive narrative. It also culminated with OpenTable sending me to NYC.

What one thing should PRs know about you?
I don’t accept guest content on my site, but aside from that, I put a lot of time, effort & money into every post I create. From developing a recipe through to actually making it and photographing it, it takes a lot of hard work. Going back to a previous point, it’s when I get to work with people that things get really interesting.

What other blogs do you read?
Primarily I actually get a lot of food and cooking inspiration from actual books like Meera Sodha’s Fresh India or Anna Jones A Modern Way to Cook for instance. But in terms of other bloggers/online people I love Noisette Bakehouse’s Instagram and blog, Hannah at The Dinner Bell, Charlie at Charlie Distracted (for travel) and a bunch of others.

Michael Hawkes and The Bearded Bakery feature on the leading Vuelio Influencer Database along with thousands of other bloggers, influencers and journalists.