James Morton

The third series of The Great British Bake Off, in 2012, ended with James Morton as runner-up to John Whaite. He was partway through a medical degree at Glasgow at the time, and has since practised as a doctor in the city while writing about bread. Brilliant Bread, his first book, took the Guild of Food Writers award for cookbook of the year in 2014. Super Sourdough, brought out by Quadrille in 2019, works through the whole business of building a starter, keeping it alive and turning it into loaves, with the same curiosity about why dough behaves as it does that shaped How Baking Works (2015). Brew (2016) covers home brewing. Morton grew up in Shetland from the age of three, and returned to it in Shetland: Cooking on the Edge of the World, written with his father, the journalist Tom Morton. The Big Book of Bread came in 2024.