Dean Brettschneider on the set of Hottest Home Baker. Photo / Supplied
Between books, TV shows and travel, it's a wonder this chef still gets time to bake.
It's been only a few months since we last profiled Kiwi "global baker" Dean Brettschneider. That was for the release of his joint cookbook - The Cook and the Baker - with Mark McDonough, owner of Newmarket deli cafe Zarbo.
It was a successful book with a matching TV series
on Food TV, but it's all very last year for Brettschneider, who's barely stood still since. There's the second season of NZ's Hottest Home Baker, (TV3, Thursdays, 7.30pm) on which he is the head judge with Aussie cake queen Jade Lipton, and for which he is making one of his flying visits back to New Zealand to promote.
While here he's filming appearances on Food TV's Food Store Chefs, overseeing his popular micro bakery at Zarbo and consulting to Starbucks NZ. By the time you read this, he'll be winging his way to Shanghai where has a chain of successful bakeries - Baker and Spice - and where he is also putting together a travel-cum-food book on the city.
Oh, and there's the release of the companion book for Hottest Home Baker, a collection of contestant recipes from Brettschneider and others, which features some invaluable tips.
You have to ask, when does he sleep, or, well, bake? But he's still very hands-on at the Zarbo bakery and the Shanghai chain, developing new products and helping staff.
"I am on the move all the time and I do get frustrated. It was Berlin two weeks ago, then Denmark - which he calls home as it's 'where my clothes are and where my girlfriend lives' - then England, then here, then Shanghai. If I get a bit grumpy I only have myself to blame, I did create the Global Baker brand.
"There's a cost to it but at the end of the day I can put my hand on my heart and say I have a lot of fun."
The thing he's having most fun planning at the moment though is that Shanghai book, as yet untitled and expected in October.
"It's built around breakfast, lunch and dinner and what baking means at each of those times. But it's also about design, and about the city. I want my photographer [seasoned Kiwi food photographer Aaron Maclean] to capture breakfast in the city, and dinner in the city. It'll also be filled with lots of behind-the-scenes photographs of the dishes being prepared. It will be more than just another boring old recipe book."
It doesn't sound as though this Kiwi-born Global Baker plans on sitting around to watch the dough rise any time soon.
