Why are you calling it Gingerbread Bakery?

Why are you calling it Gingerbread Bakery?

A few people have asked me why I have called the business Gingerbread Bakery.  To those who live in or around Market Drayton this will seem to be a stupid question with an obvious answer but for others it may seem sensible enough.

Picking a name for a business isn’t actually as easy as it should be.  Because the company is Limited then there are rules that no two businesses can be called the same name of course but also in the land of Internet Domain Names there is also the requirement that the .co.uk or .com or .whatever is still available.  To choose a business name for which there is no Domain available would be a bit silly in my opinion and so the search began.

After much deliberation and searching I started to read articles that suggested that Market Drayton is famed with being the home of gingerbread.  The story goes that the first recorded mention of gingerbread being baked in the town is attributed to Roland Lateward back in 1793 but it was probably made much earlier than that because there were already stocks of ginger in the High Street as far back as 1640.  According to the history books the oldest cake in the world is Gingerbrede and the earliest recipes date back to 1390.

The Billingtons recipe is perhaps the most famous gingerbread recipe and has been made in the town since 1817 when Mr. Thomas owned the business, recipe, and the hand cranked pressing machine which gives Billingtons Gingerbread it infamous pattern.  The recipe and the machine have been handed down from baker to baker since that date.  Terry McCarthy, who owned and ran the Krusty Loaf in Market Drayton until 2003, passed the recipe and machine onto his son Mark McCarthy in 1995.  Mark now lives in York and sells the biscuits through a few shops within Market Drayton.

The origial Billingtons recipe is the worst kept secret in the area and so I’ll include it here.  This is the recipe that we will be using for OUR gingerbread biscuits in the shop;

Traditional Gingerbread Recipe

450g Self Raising Flour
220g Brown Sugar
220g Salted Butter
1 Free Range Egg
2 tbls Golden Syrup
4 tsp Ground Ginger
4 tsp Rum or Brandy

Cream the butter and sugar together and add the syrup, spices, and egg and mix together until well incorporated.  Lastly add the rum or brandy.  Place the mixture into two shallow greased tins and bake at 180C for 20-25 minutes until golden brown.  Remove from the oven and score the gingerbread before it cools.  Alternatively, cut the uncooked mixture into gingerbread man shapes and bake for a similar time.

With such an amazing story that is steeped in so much history I began to wonder if I should pick a name that would pay homage to that history.  I’m relatively new to Market Drayton and I’m a bit of a sucker for tradition and old fashioned values and I got swept away with the story and I felt a romantic attachment to the history of the town.  Gingerbread Bakery Limited was available and so was gingerbreadbakery.co.uk.  It almost seemed too good an opportunity to miss.

Somebody recently suggested to me that Market Drayton is probably split down the middle with half of the population being very nostalgic and wanting to hold on to the gingerbread history and tradition, and half the population actually being sick to death of the whole thing.

If you belong to the half that, like me, feel romantically attached to the nostalgia then, very shortly Market Draton will once again have a High Street bakery that makes and sells gingerbread to a traditional recipe.  If you pop in for a coffee then be sure to ask for a piece to dunk into your drink.

If you belong to the other half then we’ll not mention the ‘G’ word and we’ll offer you a nice chunk of shortbread to dunk instead!

We will of course be selling a whole raft of other lovely goodies including bread, cakes, pastries, pies, rolls, and biscuits.

How do you feel about gingerbread, love it or hate it?

 

Reviving the High Street

In an economy that is struggling so badly and where the High Street is under so much pressure, I wonder why on earth I’m opening a High Street Bakery.

The answer isn’t straight forward and it probably asks more questions than it answers.

Although it is abhorrent that any supermarket giant should comment on the state of the High Street, Sainsburys’ Mr King does have some valid points.  Times have changed.  In the good old days of the thriving High Street my mom would shop pretty much every day and she would visit the butcher, the baker, and the green grocer to buy the day’s produce, struggling with bags from one shop to the other, and then she would trudge the half-a-mile to our home before unpacking and cooking the dinner.  Compare that with today’s average weekly shop that consists of driving to one of the big 5 supermarkets, grabbing a trolley, walking around the store filling it with a week’s worth of shopping, throwing it in the car and driving home.  The good old days were hard work and took up a lot of time but because of poor transport links the shops were full of locally sourced goods.

The High Street in it’s current form just cannot compete and it is unrealistic to ask people to change their habbits just for the sake of it.  Even if people get behind a campaign to support their High Street I fear that it will be short lived.  It has to adapt and offer a product or an experience that the supermarket can’t, or doesn’t currently offer.

You only have to visit one of the many farmer’s markets or food festivals to see that there is an undercurrent of people who have a desire to buy locally and support locally.  The number of people who visited the Ludlow Food Festival last year (2011) was incredible.  The atmosphere was amazing; customers talking direclty to food producers about food origins and potential new products.  Customers able to touch, smell, and importantly taste old, new, and exciting flavours.  The event was heaving and offered something that no supermarket can offer.

So we need to see new shops, vibrant shops, that are not only selling exciting products but also interesting shopping experiences.  Not just restricted to food businesses but jewellery manufacturers, arts and crafts designers, clothing designers.

If you will, close your eyes and imagine a High Street where all of the empty shops are now occupied and are offering individual and unique products and experiences.  Exciting products that have been produced locally and have tracability and are environmentally sustainable.  Now fill that High Street with the buzz of people excited to be walking around and talking about what’s on offer, asking questions about origin, touching, tasting, smelling what’s on offer.  Now add the smell of freshly baked bread and cakes ;o)

If your local High Street adapted into this, could you see yourself shopping there?

What is your vision for the High Street?

Gingerbread Bakery – The Shop

Well almost 1 year since the original idea was born I have managed to find a shop that I really like and doesn’t need major internal redecoration!

In fact, I’d go as far as saying that the shop is perfect; it even looks like a gingerbread house!

I actually looked at this shop in April last year but the rent was far too much and I  decided that I couldn’t afford to make it work.  However, things moved on and the landlord reduced the rent to a sensible figure and it almost felt like fate!

So on the 20th January 2012 I signed the lease on 3 High Street, Market Drayton.  I had mixed feelings of excitement and impending doom but overall it felt like the right thing to do and was the culmination of 12 months of dithering.  I now have premises and I’m paying Rent and Rates and so I HAVE to do something with it!

If the trip to River Cottage was the conception then this is now the birth.  It was a slow and painful pregnancy but Gingerbread Bakery has been born!  Three floors, 6 rooms, and a total Internal Area of 1,685 Square Feet.

The main shop floor is a long room that extends from the front of the shop to the back where there is an extra room for storage and general baking activity.  The idea is to have the ovens in the main shop and this will not only make the baking very visible and fill the shop with the delicious smells of baking bread and cakes but it will also keep the shop nice and warm.

I would like the whole process to be very visible so that people can see (and smell) the goods being baked throughout the day (and night) and they can start to trust that everthing we sell is baked freshly, on site, every day.  It will be Fresh, it will be Local, and it will be Seasonal.

The shop looks out onto the main square in Market Drayton and I’m imagining that in the summer hordes of customers will be sitting on the benches opposite eating freshly prepared sandwiches on freshly prepared bread using freshly prepared, local, seasonal ingredients.

Thanks to Shropshire Council, and in particular Peter Wilson, I now have a Mentor who is focussing my ideas and starting to pull the whole thing together and we are aiming for a grand opening … as soon as is humanly possible.

The last few weeks has been a flurry of activity finding sign-writers, painters & decorators, plasterers, electricians, glazers, etc.  There is so much still to do and it is all so daunting but I’m really starting to get excited about it.

The more people I talk to about it, the more I get excited and the more I’m convinced that it’s something that Market Drayton really needs.  So many people have mentioned the fact that the shop was in fact a bakery for many, many years and was opened by George Rhodes and Terry McCarthy in 1973.  The shop was called the Krusty Loaf and remained open until 2003 when the lease expired and the business was transferred to Queen Street.

For now I can’t wait to get on with it but if you have any ideas for the shop, or ideas about what products you would like me to develop then please let me know.  What you love to be able to buy?

How do you make a Swiss Roll?

How do you make a Swiss Roll?

Push him down the Alps!

The old ones are … well … the oldest I guess!

I had a lovely bowl of Fridge soup at about 17:30 today and as lovely as it was I was left with a craving for something a bit sweet.  I know Christmas has just gone and I should be full to brimming with sweet stuff but I live by the rule that you can NEVER have too much cake!

Now a Swiss Roll is a fatless sponge that is basically whipped up eggs with sugar and flour.  So nice and light and with a good quality jam oozing out of the middle it can be hard to beat.

The basic recipe is,

4 Free Range Medium Eggs
100g Caster Sugar (plus extra for sprinkling)
100g Self Raising Flour
4 Tablespoons of Jam (whatever is your favourite)

A Swiss Roll tin (33′ x 23′) buttered and lined.
Some additional baking parchment cut slightly bigger than the cake tin.
An oven pre-heated to 200c (or 220c if not a fan oven).

That’s it!  Pretty simple eh?

Crack the eggs into a mixing bowl and add the sugar.  Now whisk the mixture up so that it is really light and fluffy and has the consistency of single cream.  When you take the whisk out, the mixture that runs off it should leave a trail.  Now sieve the flour over the mixture and gently fold it in.  Be reasonably gentle but do make sure that all of the flour is incorporated otherwise you’ll end up with dry claggy bits in your cake.

Pour the mixture into the Swiss Roll tin and make sure that you get it into all of the corners.  Gently shake the tin to flatten the mix as much as possible because there’s no butter in it and it won’t flatten itself in the oven.

Put the cake into the oven and set the timer for 10 minutes.

Baking Paper Sprinkled with Caster SugarWhile the cake is baking lay out the extra baking parchment and sprinkle generously with caster sugar. Get a small bowl and put 4 tablespoons of jam into it and mush it around a bit to make it easy to spread. Also get a nice serrated knife ready.

Put the kettle on ready to make a nice cup of coffee to have with your delicious Swiss Roll in about 5 minutes time.

When the cake is nice and brown on top it should be baked to perfection.  You can push a skewer in and make sure it comes out clean but to be honest if you have given it 10 minutes and it’s brown on top then you can be pretty sure that it’s cooked.

Trimmed and Scored

As soon as you fetch the cake out of the oven give it a little jiggle to make sure the sides aren’t stuck and confidently tip it upside down onto the sugared parchment. Carefully remove the tin and the lining paper from the cake and breathe.

While the cake is still warm take the serrated knife and carefully trim the edges and make a score about 1″ from one end.  Score about half way through the cake making sure that you don’t cut all of the way through.

Looking good?  Make sure the coffee is progressing nicely because you are going to need it in a minute.

Jammed Up

Let the cake rest for a minute and then spread your lovely jam over the entire surface. Don’t be mean and miss the edges because people will notice and you don’t win friends by being mean!

Now take a deep breath and calm yourself. We are nearly there; Coffee and Cake is almost upon us. Using the sugared parchment to help you, roll the cake up from the scored end. Be firm with it and roll the first bit in on itself and then using the parchment roll the cake over. There isn’t a lot of cake to roll but make sure you start nice and tightly and then just let the rest roll itself.

The Money Shot

If it isn’t beautiful enough then make a conscious note of how you would do it differently next time, shrug your shoulders, pour your coffee, and tuck in anyway!

It doesn’t always work and my first attempt at it was a complete disaster but you know what, it still tasted great.

Give it a go and let me know how you get on?

Bacon & Black Pudding Rolls

Bacon & Black Pudding Rolls

I wouldn’t normally buy large pieces of black pudding because I’m the only person in the house who eats it but on this occasion it was on offer at half price and at 86p it seemed like a bargain.  As with most bargains, I’d purchased something that I didn’t intend on buying and I needed to prove that I hadn’t wasted my money.  And so Bacon and Black Pudding Bread was born.

The process is relatively straight forward and uses standard bread quantities with slightly more yeast than normal because the dough has to lift the bacon pieces.  If you cut the bacon into very small pieces then you may be able to reduce the yeast quantity.

Bacon & Black Pudding Rolls

Ingredients: (makes 10 rolls)

500g Strong Bread Flour (you can mix and match and I used 400g white and 100g Pimhill wholemeal)
1 Handful of Oatmeal (optional but I used Pimhill medium oatmeal)
15g Fresh Yeast (or 7g of fast action yeast)
10g Salt
1tbs Rapeseed Oil (or Olive Oil)
300ml Warm Water
3-4 Rashers Thick Bacon (home cured if possible)
400g Black Pudding

 

 

Method:

Put the bacon in a frying pan or under the grill and cook until browned.

Chop the bacon into pieces and combine with the flour, oatmeal, yeast, salt, oil, and water.  Mix the ingredients well and knead the dough for about 10 minutes.  If you have a mixer with a dough hook then throw all of the ingredients (except the black pudding) into the bowl and switch the machine onto a low setting.  Alternatively, roll up your sleeves and knead the dough by hand.

When the dough is nice and smooth and stretchy form it into a ball and place it into a clean, very lightly oiled bowl and cover.  A very nice tip from the lovely people at River Cottage, and featured in the River Cottage Handbook No.3 (Bread) by Daniel Stevens, is to place the bowl in a clean, black bin-liner.  The black will absorb heat from the room and help the bread to rise, it will keep the dough moist, and it’s re-usable.  Leave the dough to rise for 50-60 minutes until doubled in size.

While the dough is resting put the black pudding into a food processor with the blade tool attached and pulse until it resembles breadcrumbs. Mix in a good glug of Rapeseed or Olive oil and mix together to lightly coat the black pudding crumbs.

Tip the dough out onto a lightly floured surface and knock the air out of it using your fingers.  Form the dough into a ball again, split into 2 using a dough scraper, and then flatten each piece using a rolling pin until the dough is about 1” thick.

When the dough is flat spread the black pudding crumbs over the top and start to fold over and roll up and encase the bread pudding crumbs.  Roll into a long round sausage shape about 10” long and using a dough scraper cut into about 5 pieces.  Repeat this process for the other piece of dough.

Carefully place each roll, with the seam at the bottom, onto a lightly floured tray (or peel), cover, and leave to prove for another 50-60 minutes until doubled in size.  If you are using a black bin liner then just put the whole tray (or peel) back into the bag.

After about 20 minutes switch the oven to 230C or its highest setting and put in a baking stone if you are using one.

When the rolls have doubled in size place them into the oven (or transfer to the baking stone), cook for 10 minutes and then turn the oven down to 200C and bake for a further 20-30 minutes until they are golden brown and sound hollow when the bottom is tapped.  If you are not sure, leave the rolls in for a few minutes longer.  Remove from the oven and place on a cooling rack.

They are delicious served warm but can also be eaten when completely cold.

If you try this recipe out, let us know how you get on?

The story so far, The beginning

This story begins about 18 years ago with my desire, as a new father, to put good quality food into the mouths of my children.  The realisation that a lot of supermarket pre-packaged “convenience food” is far from convenient and is full of what we know colloquially as Shite!

Actually to be fair to my parents the story probably began 40 (ish) years ago being raised at a time when there was no such thing as a microwave oven and a Ready Meal was beans on toast.  My mother would work a full day in the local greengrocers and return home with a bag full of locally bought ingredients and proceed to prepare our Tea (or Dinner if you want to be picky!).  Occasionally a cookery book would be consulted but generally it was good home cooked food prepared with the familiarity that it had been cooked 100 times before.

The only way to be sure that I knew what my kids were eating was to cook it myself.  Like a lot of cooks and bakers I’m a perfectionist and so what I produced was always subject to my own criticism and mental notes of what to change next time.  Naturally this spurred me on to cook more frequently and more adventurously and I found that I had a particular affinity with baking.  I have a devilish sweet tooth and so more often than not I would spend Sunday afternoon baking a cake or dessert of some sort.

River Cottage HQ

Fast forward to February 2011, the recession was really starting to kick in and work in the IT development world was thin on the ground. On a slow Monday afternoon I clicked over to the River Cottage website and stumbled on something that was about to change my life; a four day cookery course at River Cottage HQ.  If I’m honest I hadn’t really watched that many episodes, although I was obviously aware of Hugh and what River Cottage was all about.  Uncharacteristically I didn’t hesitate I just booked the course for the following week and the deal was done.

Hugh & I

In comparison to the fast paced world of IT development where everything changes every few years and you are forced to constantly keep up with technology and learn new languages, I suddenly discovered something that has it’s roots firmly in the ground and hasn’t changed very much at all in hundreds, maybe thousands of years. The infectious enthusiasm of the River Cottage team made my heart sing and the week flew by in the blink of an eye. My life was changed and I began to allow my mind to dream and wonder whether at 40 (ish) it was time to consider a full blown mid-life crisis!

If I had to choose just one word to describe that week it would be, “WOW!”

If I were allowed to have two words they would be, “Life Changer!”

One of the River Cottage days involved making a whole basket full of bread and after asking the baker how I could learn more about the process he suggested that I contact Aidan Chapman of The Phoenix Bakery in Weymouth as he offers bread making courses and a Saturday Apprentice day.

The Phoenix BakeryAfter returning home and still buzzing from the experience I contacted Aidan and arranged to visit in March to spend a shift with him baking at his shop.  Wham! Another incredible 10 hours that started at 02:00 am on Saturday morning and was filled with yeasted bread, pastry, cake, quiche, and sourdough, and finished at midday on Saturday.  I hadn’t slept for nearly 30 hours and I had booked a B&B to crash at but I didn’t need it, I was so fired up that I just jumped into the car and drove home with the smell of freshly baked bread gently wafting around me.

My mind was made up.  I wanted to open a bakery and spend my days (or more significantly my nights) baking bread and cakes.

Since March I have completed a fantastic Pastry course with The Pastry King, attended a Pork Pie day at HEFF, and visited Aidan and spent another night baking with him.  Every other day in-between has been spent baking, baking, and baking.  For fun, for food, and sometimes just to fill the day.

Which brings us up to the present day (December 2011) where we are currently negotiating a lease on a shop in Market Drayton and are looking to move in and start trading in early 2012.  I have gone from giddy with excitement to overwhelmed with fear and back to giddy, sometimes over the course of just one day.  At the moment I’m somewhere in between but I committed to realising the dream

We are called Gingerbread Bakery Limited and we will be selling fresh, local, seasonal goods that will be prepared daily, on the premises.  Bread, cakes, pastries, pies, sandwiches, coffee, and tea all freshly created by my own fair hand, on site, every day.

Do you live in Market Drayton, Shropshire or the surrounding areas? I’d love your support and I’d love to hear any requests that you have for products that you’d like me to offer? Leave a comment to let me know.

Andy

  • Fresh – Local – Seasonal