As the sun shines through the window on a frosty morning, I thought it might be a good time to reflect on what Andy’s Bread has been up to in the last few months.
December was a crazily busy month. We put on two Christmas pizza nights (back to back), then did Broneirion Winter event (in pouring rain) and the Old Mill Christmas Market. (The lesson from the former is that people probably don’t want to buy bread on a cold wet Friday evening – despite that we sold most of what had been made).
After the busy-ness, we shut the bakery down on Christmas Eve for nearly 3 weeks off. The mission was a train journey to central Europe in search of good bread, pastries, cakes (and beer…). We took the train to Berlin for New Year, then headed down to Dresden and Vienna. Then headed back to the UK via Salzburg, Heidelberg and Paris.
The star of the bread show was, of course, Paris. We stayed very near to “Des pains et des idees” a lovely bakery just off the Canal du St. Martin. I was hoping to have a chat to the baker and a look around the bakery but with a to-be-expected gallic shrug – the email reply came back “I do not share my ideas or my know-how” – so much for the name of the bakery!
Still we ate some fabulous bread in the 3 weeks and I came back very inspired. I’ve also just picked up the Tartine series of bread books which somehow were missing from my collection so I’ve been experimenting with different sourdoughs.
Into February, I have taken the decision to bake four days a week, Wednesday through to Saturday. You can find out which breads are available on which days using my check list on the products page. Thursday morning’s breads will be sourdoughs, pumpernickel and baguettes. These are now all available from Great Oak Foods – in the window from around 10am!
Pizza night will be taking a short break for a few months with another little’un arriving in the Summer. We will be back doing that come the Autumn!
For now, to keep up to date of what is going on in the world of Andy’s Bread, sign up for the mailing list on the sidebar of the website.