Taking a break

The bake house is closed for the month. For 10 days before we closed, we baked mornings and afternoons, We made over 100 par baked rolls for the freezer, over 150 ciabatta and 60 stromboli. We filled our freezer and labelled the bread for those shops that still wanted to use our bread on holidays. We filled other freezers as customers ordered in advance for their own requirements. We worked hard, loved the fact that we were going on holidays and loved the fact that our bread was important to customers. The last weekend at home we had our traditional School book burning BBQ, where we burned all the workbooks and copy books we no longer needed and where we burned all that went wrong in the long school year - all that we can now forget for the long and lazy summer. Starting a new era, the oldest finished school for good and sitting by the fire in the garden for a long time that night, plans were hatched and songs were sung. After that long week of work and the weekend of partying, we packed in a couple of hours, welcomed our house sitter, put on the roof boxed, forgot a few things at home and headed for the ferry for a month break in Germany with family, with good weather and with old familiar places and new things to explore. 

In the middle of a forest in the Eiffel is the first stop, stopping with the grandmother who at 87 is well able for a week of four extra grandchildren, who supplies copious amount of food and beer, who makes her own Nutella and has a press full of juggling balls, meter long mikado sticks and badminton rackets, a uni cycle to practise on and rose bed to weed. The leaving cert student and his father head off to the Nuerburgring for their four day stint of unrelentless racing. The German formula one Grand Prix provided excitement, noise and, for the school leaver, the certainty that motor sport engineering is the way to go.

After the bread round didn’t indulge in cars but went scouting around the neighbourhood for a bakery that still bakes. Sadly, even the famous German bakeries that used to operate in each village, open at 5.30 and supply every house with freshly baked rolls and breads, have nearly all embraced par baked frozen deliveries. Here, as at home, “freshly baked in-store”  now means unpacking frozen breads to bake them for a few minutes in the oven. Taste and nutrition don’t really like this process but costs are kept at a minimum and bakeries can compete again with supermarkets on price,  while cheap products remain the customer’s decision making priority.

Four mornings, we ate a bland concoction of soft and squishy bread rolls until we found the one bakery that still bakes. The rolls were crisp and tasty, differing in flavour and shapes and the sour dough loaf a dream. The bag of rolls and treats was about 30% more expensive than in the other shops but definitely worth it. We got chatting, admired their bake house and might be allowed in to watch some morning next week. Working a proper night shift, they start at 12.30am and open their bakery at 5.30 in the morning. What a time to start shopping!!!!! After the bread round is happy to live and bake in Ireland.