The Big Birthday Bake!

On May 1st we celebrated our first year baking for Wolvercote  – a celebration involving balloons, fairy cakes for all our regular customers and a mammoth 12-hour baking session with a variety of different breads. We have come a long way in the last twelve months, making most progress during a day learning from expert baker and teacher Clive Mellum at Shipton Mill. That’s when we started to get the hang of, amongst other things,  sourdough starters, looking after ‘mothers’ and a how to prove rye dough in a basket…  Clive is an inspirational teacher and it was a privilege to be allowed to benefit from his decades of baking.   We have borrowed his concept for rye sourdough loaves with figs and caraway seeds, which are now selling as fast as we can make them  – though Fridays and Saturdays are enough extra work, on top of our regular bake.  Wholemeal walnut breads are also proving very popular.  It all takes time, but that is the real secret of good bread  -  the longer you give it, the better it gets!