Dan Lepard (born 1964) is an Australian baker, food writer, photographer, television presenter and celebrity chef. He was previously a fashion photographer working for Italian Vogue before changing careers age 27, and is today known for reconciling historical methods with innovation in baking.
In 1992 Dan became a pastry chef for Alastair Little in Soho, London even though he had no formal training. He then worked for David Hockney as a chef in both London and Los Angeles.
He started working as a baker and consultant at Baker & Spice Bakery in 1997. At his time at Baker & Spice he worked with Sami Tamimi (chef), Yotam Ottolenghi (head pastry chef), and Jim Webb (head viennoiserie chef). Tamimi, Ottolenghi and Webb along with Noam Bar later teamed up to start Ottolenghi's deli's and restaurants, and Dan helped advise the team on the bread for their bakeries.
He has founded bakeries for Fergus Henderson at St John, John Torode at Mezzo, Tony Kitous at Levant and Giorgio Locatelli at Locanda Locatelli and Zafferano.
In 2003, he was the winner of the Outstanding Contribution to London Restaurants at the London Restaurant Awards. In 2012, he created the pop-up bakery The Loaf in a Box in San Sebastián, Spain. It ran from July to September and served as an arena for all those who love bread to debate and eat fantastic produce. In 2012 UK supermarket chain Sainsbury's launched a baking website with Dan where he has a regular Q&A slot.
In 2013 Dan featured as a judge alongside Kerry Vincent on The Great Australian Bake Off, a cooking television series aired on Nine Network in Australia. This was the first series and is based on the popular British format The Great British Bake Off. In the UK he appears as a guest chef on Channel Four's Sunday Brunch.
