Christina Tosi, of Momofuku Milk Bar fame, has her ‘mother dough’ — one dough recipe that gets used in a whole bunch of ways at this iconic New York bakery.

Pondering on Christina’s revelatory cookbook Milk, we began to realise just how often some base recipes repeat within our own shop.

For me, Christina’s evocative description of her ‘mother dough’ stirred up childhood memories of Mum’s large maroon, cocoa-powder-stained diary, filled with precious recipes like Aunty Peggy’s rice dish and apple ‘novel’ pudding. The diary is a sacred holy file that, if the house were on fire, I swear would be grabbed first.

There is something tactile about keeping your favourite recipes in a book that you can call on when in need of a sure thing. Such books hold a certain place in time, as if captured, waiting to unleash their magic upon those who find them.

These are our own ‘Mother’ recipes, the ones that link the shop together: essential cakes and crispy and gooey bits that can be mixed, smeared and smudged into all manner of combinations.

Our Mother recipes are a part of our shop’s DNA — the things we come back to again and again, like family. Reliable, comforting and amazing, they form the building blocks of bigger and better things.