Monday, February 20, 2012
A trendy
It seems that I have become a trendy, having spent most of my life being an anti-trendy, which as all good therapists know is just a mirror image of a trendy; one has not really moved on. So perhaps instead of moving on I have just moved in.
The subject of these profundities being the baking of bread, with me being about to remove one of the loaves from my 102nd baking from the freezer against this evening's tea. Bread which is serviceable but not fancy: I have not turned out to have the knack, the patience or whatever else it takes to make really decent white bread. Noting in passing that even the Mill Road Co-op in Cambridge manages better white rolls than I can; at least they are decent fresh. I don't suppose they stand well but they didn't need to.
Trendy because there is lots of stuff in the weekend newspapers these days about the making of bread. About the whereabouts of artisan bakers. About the smells and joys of freshly ground flour from the watermill. So, last night I was invited to hunker down in front of the old Etonian cook on the box doing his stuff on bread. Possibly beamed live, direct from his riverine & organic bakehouse. An invitation which I declined. And then this morning I find myself reading in the Saturday DT about a metropolitan micro-bakery. A bakery which appears to be run by two teenagers out of their mother's kitchen and which, again, looks to be baking sour-dough bread which is a lot prettier than I can manage.
The tone of the article is very light and jolly; just the thing to glance at over breakfast. But one does wonder how much of the story is missing, how much drive and bother it actually takes to sell bread out of the family kitchen. They might only be baking one day a week but that can only be part of the story. Getting the ingredients, preparation, sales, marketing and publicity (of which this article by Mum is part) must account for a good bit more time. And what about the bizzies from the council? I thought there were rather fierce rules about what kind of a kitchen you can sell food out of.
I assume that the correspondence address in Buckingham Palace Road is not their own. They value their privacy that much. But whose is it?
The subject of these profundities being the baking of bread, with me being about to remove one of the loaves from my 102nd baking from the freezer against this evening's tea. Bread which is serviceable but not fancy: I have not turned out to have the knack, the patience or whatever else it takes to make really decent white bread. Noting in passing that even the Mill Road Co-op in Cambridge manages better white rolls than I can; at least they are decent fresh. I don't suppose they stand well but they didn't need to.
Trendy because there is lots of stuff in the weekend newspapers these days about the making of bread. About the whereabouts of artisan bakers. About the smells and joys of freshly ground flour from the watermill. So, last night I was invited to hunker down in front of the old Etonian cook on the box doing his stuff on bread. Possibly beamed live, direct from his riverine & organic bakehouse. An invitation which I declined. And then this morning I find myself reading in the Saturday DT about a metropolitan micro-bakery. A bakery which appears to be run by two teenagers out of their mother's kitchen and which, again, looks to be baking sour-dough bread which is a lot prettier than I can manage.
The tone of the article is very light and jolly; just the thing to glance at over breakfast. But one does wonder how much of the story is missing, how much drive and bother it actually takes to sell bread out of the family kitchen. They might only be baking one day a week but that can only be part of the story. Getting the ingredients, preparation, sales, marketing and publicity (of which this article by Mum is part) must account for a good bit more time. And what about the bizzies from the council? I thought there were rather fierce rules about what kind of a kitchen you can sell food out of.
I assume that the correspondence address in Buckingham Palace Road is not their own. They value their privacy that much. But whose is it?
# posted by Jim @ 2:05 AM 
