Travel – permanently curious

We’re back to baking, the bread is back in the shops and on the market stalls, life is good, nights are short and the holidays are over. Isn’t it amazing how time moves on whatever we do and how all things come to an end – the good and the bad.  Yesterday was the first day to bake and I was not at all sure that I’d remember all the recepies and the routine but when you actually stand in the bakehouse at 2 in  the morning, all becomes routine and the holiday a short interlude that is slowly turning into memories and lovely photographs. 

As every year, we travelled to Germany this summer to spend two weeks with family over there. We have always taken the long way in the summer and travel the roads and the sea. With only me driving this used to take two days with a break in London. These days, with more drivers in the car, we go straight through and drive the 1000km with two ferry breaks inbetween. We snooze in the car and some can do this better than others but whichever way, five people in a Transit Connect for 24 hours is not comfortable but well doable. The ferry creates the break and the snooze stretched out on benches – with possibly a little bit of beer or gaming thrown in. Comfort it isn;t but fun it can be and for us, something we have done every year and something which is a tradition and a definite part of our year. Travelling by land like this also give you a great idea how far apart places really are. Geography becomes reality as we reach the coast, wait for the boat and reach the other side of the Channel or the Irish Sea. England becomes a distance to be travelled through not only a point destination  and we learn interesting cultural facts like the fact that the Welsh close their motorways at night for roadworks and like to have their diversion signs in Welsh – a language with an inordinate amount of consonants. Every single year we come to Dover and see their amazing fortification on the famous cliffs and every year we say we should look at that and some year we will – but not this year. This year we arrived in Dover at 6 in the morming and discovered that they put out their recycling in bags in the street and that the seagulls think that’s feeding time. Also, no coffee shop is open except for a 24h Mac Donalds which was not the super success, as opposed to the amazing Beach Diner in Fishguard in Wales which was open early ( when we hit in on the way back) and served the best breakfast I have eaten for a long time. Locally sourced meat  might have been the key or possibly the 12 hours spent in the car......

Taking a break from family, we took 2 days in Den Helder in North Holland just for us, a 21st had to be celebrated with wind and surf and beach and so we hit the motorway again for 4 hours and left the hills of the Eifel near Cologne for the astonishingly flat lands of the north Holland. Courtesy of Airbnb, we had a lovely house in a very pedestriansised part of the town where everyone seems to cycle these lovely big bikes with comfortable saddles. Nobody wears a helmet and biccyle paths abound – as do canals and deichs. Walking, boating, cyling, my kind of place. 

As always it was great to see another place, meet new people and do new things.  Often we think we’d like to travel and think that travel needs lots of money and time and in the end the majority of us just don’t go. So, since, neither time nor a surplus of money are on the horizon for After the bread round any time soon, I’ve opted for the tiny version of the grand tour. I travel for two days at a time, a weekend here, a day there. It all addsup to lots of new places and experiences and courtesy of the always available pasta and sauce , it is never really expensive. This time I got to visit an old submarine of the Dutch navy. Hugely interesting but an immensely tiny space for 70 men. A car with five people seemed massively luxuriously after that.

Ours is the age of cheap travel so make the most of it. 

Books, books and more books

Books are the ultimate treat for me, a good book is better than
television or social media any time,  a book will make everything
better and a good book will make many things perfect.
The good things in life need a book to make them perfect. Christmas
without a new book is nearly as bad as Christmas without a new pyjama
and holidays without a new book are seriously lacking while even a
stay in hospital can be made bearable with a book. Days that threaten
to go really bad can be survived with a book – like the time I arrived
in a new city and found the student accomodaton a serious disaster.  I
walked the streets until I found a shop that sold supplies and
thankfully also a small array – of actually seriously mediocre books.
With crackers, cheese, a glass of wine and a book , the student
accomodation became a possibility, the first night was weathered and
everything panned out ok and turned out to be one of the best years
spent in college. Books, you gather, are important, books are both
crutch and inspiration, relaxation and – just sometimes - even
education. For some strange reason it is not only the content, it is
the feel of the book, a real treat to read a good hardback. After the
bread round goes with the times – most of the time – and has lots of
books on the phone which is also a good way to read but never the same
as the real thing. Yesterday, on the deck chair beside the forest
swimming pool beside the Steinback brewery ( after the bread round is
on holidays....) holding the phone to read was just not the same.
Can’t read the screen in the sun and the contrary phone always slipped
the screen sideways – just to annoy.
Kilkenny has such an amazing abundance of book shops and a wonderful
library that there is never a shortage of books anywhere and
everywhere there is a wonderful attitude to the seriously long winded
and very undecided browser that needs to read half the book before
considering to buy. I love bookshops, especially bookshops with
chairs.

This year’s holiday book was a very undemanding and
uncomplicated and lovely to read novel called How to find love in a
book shop by Veronica Henry. One of her characters is only just
converted to reading and comes up with this conclusion “ So that’s why
people read. Because books explain things: How you thought, and how
you behaved, and made you realise you were not alone in doing what you
did or feeling what you felt.”Simple, straight forward and not at all
bad.  Books are one of the keys to life and there is one for every
mood and every person. So put down those insipid video’s on your
captivating screens and grab a book. After the bread round has just
finished the morning read. Still waking up early have the sunny
terrace in my mother house – a house full of books – all to myself.

Shall now start the day and go and negotiate with the local baker to
swop recepies. Irish Soda bread against his amazing “Sportler Brot”.
If you’re lucky that could be the start of Speltbakers dabbling with
rye.

More selling …..

Last week, After the bread round was worried about expensive food festivals and unaffordable stall fees. This week, after the bread round, set up a stall at the National Hounds show in Stradbally. Stall fee €40, easy access, setting up after 10 am is perfectly ok and we were involved in choosing stall location as to where we thought we’d fit best. Setting up in front of the van, there was no access hassle, no parking issues, no frazzled wardens – there was in fact nothing but sunshine, horses and hounds and people in snazzy horsy outfits wondering if they could buy a scone for breakfast – and did we have butter?  An experiment in selling locations was underway and the easiest set up ever experienced.

Basically, we wanted to know if we need foody festivals and food orientated venue or will an abundance of people suffice? Will people in any life situation buy bread if it is on offer? For food festivals, people come specifically to buy food and we are surrounded by other food stalls. People who come to our stall most likely are familiar with the benefits of spelt and they know their sourdoughs and yeast loaves. Here, people knew their horses and their hounds, they waited for the lead rein class and the hounds competition, they really came to buy saddles and bridles and halters and when they saw us beside Simon Porter, some meandered over and figured that maybe that bread that they brought for the picnic could do with an improvement. 

Stradbally hall is one of the most picturesque estates I know, a lovely old house and very pretty pastoral land with – of course – grazing sheep. They had set up a vast array of horsy entertainment from pony games and lead rein to horse shows and jumping competition. For more entertainment there was side saddle and hussar riding and dog shows not only for the professional hounds but also for any kind of dog you had. Obviously the show is trying to change from a purely competitive event to a fun show and is beginning to succeed. Now, I love horses and I can easily spend a Sunday sitting in the sun and admiring beautiful horses being shown, jumped or led. I also enjoy all the rest, the hassled mothers arriving late, with nervous kids, nervous ponys and the tail not plaited yet. I love seeing the teams gather around their truck with a long table set with table cloth and flowers - for the lunch and tea. Nearly everyone here was here for the day. I really loved watching the style, the dress of the leaders of the lead rein class, the men with bowler hats running nearly as graceful as the horses they are leading and the kids so proud and the dogs so everywhere. 

I would enjoy a day out at a horse show anytime. In another life, I would have loved to compete and be part of this world but as it is, having a bread table in the middle of it, is good fun too. Good fun and it worked. We sold nearly all we brought, could have sold more of certain breads and will come again now that we realize what is needed, what people know and what they will buy. To give you the figures, I sold 55% of what I would sell at a really, really good day at SAVOUR. Taking the stall fees into account, that number goes up to 70%. Now add to that, that here I am meeting an entirely new customer base, that there was not an inch of hassle along the way, that the nice man at the bar gave me a free glass of wine, that nobody had to carry anything anywhere and that I only started the bake at 3.30 am rather than at 1.30am, you do the maths. I think it’s a no brainer. And as I said, I like horses and because it was my lucky day – just when I was seriously regretting no having brought some butter, Bride Mc Donald set up beside us in a horsebox. She was churning and selling butter……..

Oh, and these kids where the star of the show – pony games: from now on my favourite sport. 

Artisan, hand-made and local – when is it true and when not?

Artisan implies made by hand by a skilled craftsperson, artisan implies a small outfit with dedicated people producing good food, crafts or art. Artisan is also one of the most abused terms of our time as anyone and everyone in the advertising industry clambers on the band wagon of “local”, “artisan”, “hand made”, “hand cut”, “hand roasted” and “hand everything”. So be a bit alert out there and find and support your real small, local  producers. You don’t have to, of course, you can buy and eat whatever you like but just be aware that not everything with Glen in the title and with a friendly face on the picture is actually real. 

Summer is the time for  food festivals and shows, the time when small producers try and get more sales space, more advertising and more exposure and every year it is the time we find we cannot compete with the larger companies that have jumped on the wagon and that can so easily afford the inflated stall fees which for us quite often turn an expected increased profit into an advertising venture. 

Before I became a small food producers, I used to organize small craft fairs. When the celtic tiger roared, fees for festivals could be exorbitant and the small artists and crafts people could barely afford to attend. As one of the crafter came back after 3 days in Waterford, he coined the now famous quote: “ I should have been selling f***** rice balloons”. As so often, everyone paid the same stall fee and good, Irish made crafts found themselves beside cheap imports- unable to compete and unable to sell to the -  sometimes so sadly - undiscerning consumer. 

We still don’t sell rice balloons but try and sell bread and somehow deal with the costs of doing so, especially this year where for no known reason stall fees have gone up across the board. Like many other producers, we do not buy in any of our breads. We make what we sell that morning and therefore what we can sell on any given day is limited. Because we do make everything by hand we need at least two bakers, sometimes three. Because we start at 1 am, we also need sellers that are more awake and can relieve us by lunchtime when even the most upbeat and enthusiastic baker is getting tired. So, when we are faced with stall fees of well over  €100 per day or €365 for two days – plus staff costs, transport and ingredients, a sales day very soon does not make any sense at all. And that would be the good days where you actually sell what you make, when many of you good customers come out and buy and appreciate the bread. Other days, when the weather turns Irish and the customers fickle, you’re looking at a full days work ( after, in our case, a full nights work) and a loss in the bargain. Some days you not only get cold and wet and disheartened, you also take a gust of wind to the gazebo that can cost you €50 in replacement parts or at  worst €500 for a new one. 

We all know these days and we cater for them. We know they are part of market trading and we factor them in. All I ask it that you don’t forget them either and that you know how much we appreciate a kind word and how much a good sales day has to factor in bad sales days 

Without wanting to blow our own trumpet – too much - we are good. Every city, every town has its own amazing food producers, some tiny, some a little bit bigger and some getting into a league where things finally begin to make sense. Every town could set up its own unique style of market, support it’s own producers and supply its own people with these really local, really handmade, really good crafts and foods. That is what food festivals and markets are for and if you price us off the market and instead open your spaces to the big guys than each food festival becomes a copy of the next as the same celebrity chefs do the same demonstrations and the same stalls sell the same produce as they travel the country. It is a very sad day when so many local Kilkenny producers are debating whether they can afford to take a stall at SAVOUR and when the Iverk show loses old established stalls for the same reason. The Iverk show is the first market we ever did – only four years ago. It was the most bread we ever produced in one morning and a great feeling of achievement. We won best novelty bread with our Stromboli that year and we love the Iverk show. This year there is no sense in going and our margins do not allow nostalgia just yet. 

After the bread round would suggest local producers involved in local shows, would like guidelines as to handmade, artisan and local and other ideas to bring the best of the local producers to the local shows.

All just thoughts as we trade happily in Kilkenny, Carlow and Carrick on Suir on regular weekly markets and consider joininga Dublin market in Herbert Park every Sundays. After the bread round checked it out last Sunday and already met the local cake bakery. They are called “Take a cake” and their carrot cake is divine and certainly the reason why the daughter volunteered for the first day selling. Speltbakers are looking forward to another nice market community – and might give the festivals a miss this year. 

Food, glorious food

After the bread round, I tend to think some more about food and I am profoundly grateful to share the food producers spot in shops and on markets with so many amazing producers and products. Last Sunday for example we trialed Sunday trading at the wonderful Waterford County show in Curraghmore estate. For these shows or markets getting there is always a struggle because we make everything we sell that morning. So up early, pack up and drive, get there as the last stall and set up in a hurry. Setting up is now routine and takes all of 15 min max and once we’re set up, it time to relax and grab that first cup of tea. In Curraghmore with that tea there was a choclate tart from Merci Beaucoup, two amazing French pastrychefs from Navan whose table looked stunning and who kept my sugar and energy levels nicely topped up for the day. In Kilkenny, the Truffle fairy fills that need for chocolate after set up and in Carlow there is a choice between one of Mary’s brownies or Deirdre’s crepes with chocolate sauce, roasted hazelnuts and Baileys……   

At markets time passes quickly if it is busy and if it is not, we roam around and buy off each other and the choice is sooooo good and after a long day, dinner has to be quick. In Kilkenny on Thursday it’s organic Schnitzel or fresh salmon and tuna, in Carrick, where we joined a great farmers market only two weeks ago, it is Butlers Farm chicken or pork, in Carlow on Friday the choice is even bigger with meat and fish. High quality fresh veg and eggs everywhere and beautiful pestos and sauces that say “new Ireland” like few other things. Of course desserts are never a problem either. Charley’s cheesecakes

are a Thursday tradition in our house with the only problem being to choose which one of the many, many temptations to bring home. Collette bakes in Carrick and Mary in Carlow and – at a push we can eat our own chocolate or apple tarts or withdraw a chocolate croissants from the market – there is always one that looks a bit crooked and just has to be eaten. 

The same applies in the shops we sell in , delicatessen, coffee shops,  farm shops, food stores. Everywhere, excellent old established or new food products crowd the shelves and everywhere I could easily buy more than I sell and it is extraordinarily easy to assemble a wonderful dinner and a great weekend’s array of food on that bread round to eat after the bread round. So, try it out and get out of those multinational chains and supermarkets. Go find the local shop, the deli, the farm shop, the market and see what you can get there. We are not overpriced luxury items for the well to do. We grow, produce and sell the very best food you can buy and very good value for your money. Apparently our grandparent generation spend nearly a quarter of their income on food while we have reduced that to less than an eigth, preferring to spend our money on leisure pursuits instead. If we really are what we eat, let’s eat a bit better, lets feed our families a bit better and go search out the high quality food that’s right at our door.  

One run and one election

Some things develop over night and sometimes – very rarely mind you –working at night can have its advantages. Last night, while I was putting the sourdoughs in their baskets and making the first yeast doughs, Theresa May saw her grand plan collapse. Exit polls gave way to first counts and first seats were filled while Labour resurfaced as a political force in England as the unlikely leader Corbyn brought the party back from disaster. As the first breads were baked out, the decision was a hung parliament and I reckoned, I had a future as a political tipster, having predicted him as Prime Minister.

Pulling up at the farmers market  in Carrick on Suir, I realize that my skills as a tipster are not so good after all, as the DUP has made a deal already and Theresa May looks set to continue – with not much of a mandate and probably with half her party barking at her heals. After the bread round, I decide that I much prefer the creativity, simplicity and peace of baking to the pure nastiness of politics and go back to tomorrow’s baking plan and to the miserable realization that – in a moment of madness – I have registered to take a stall at the Waterford County fair and will now have to bake this Sunday as well. After the bread round is short of sleep and that even though all that running is meant to have injected terrible amounts of oxygen and energy into the system. 

The weekend came and the weekend went and what was the big red letter day of the women’s mini marathon came and went too. The day was clear but threatening to rain and we made our way to Dublin ready to get wet but convinced it wouldn’t rain. We believe, you see, that rain is a mental attitude!!! Many, many years ago, when same daughter and I – she was being home schooled at the time and was all of 5 – went on a “school tour” to Dublin, it poured all day, except when we stepped out into it. Whether we came out of a shop, a church, a museum or a bus, we stepped out into it with an assured “ lovely sunny day today” and it would nearly immediately oblige as showers gave way to sunny spells. Ever since that day, we reckon we have the weather under control. Also back in the dark ages before the weather app, I used to ring the weather line before trips to the Zoo or the like and for years she believed I rang ahead for good weather. Oh to be still thought so powerful. 

Anyway, last Monday, I did not ring for good weather but we still did the head thing and it did not rain for a long time.  It did not rain, while we patiently waited with nearly 40 000  other women for the run to start and it did not rain when we finally got going or when we finally decided that that warm up walk was now warm enough and actually started to run. There was music, different bands, lots of lovely spectators  and lots of good fun and gossip to be had and there were countless stories to be guessed at and lots of effort and stamina and determination to be admired. There were thousands of clappy plastic hands that made wonderful noise and produced  a lovely echo under bridges. We ran more than half  of the 10km, I am a lot fitter than I was running it the last time and we came in under the 70 min required for qualification for the next level of starting. The pressure is on as we will start with the joggers – not the walkers -  next year and I have an idea that every single one of those 10km will have to be run next year to qualify for that amazing dinner in Carluccio’s – really the real reason for that trip to Dublin. Anyhow, it was a great day and the story will continue as I still run to the tree and back and still struggle with my inherent lazyness that thinks walking is perfectly fine really. I also realize that that tree is not quite far enough away but that is all for another day. For today, I have the medal and the pictures  and the knowledge that we can still sway the weather. It only started to rain when we slowed up a bit and got us on the last kilometer.

For today, we’re back to work, back to market trading and back to wondering why people vote as they vote or sell their souls to stay in power.

The dawn is a good time for baking and bird watching. Not so much for running.

One week to go to the mini marathon in Dublin, I ran 3km this morning and found a new app with a 7 min workout which talks to me, issues rewards, promises new excersises “for free” if I earn two weeks in a row awards - and which pretends 10 seconds constitutes a break. I reckon if I run half the 10km next Monday, I’ll be doing fine and am really looking forward to the day out. Doing something with 10,000 other women can only be fun. 

After the bread round  this week, I not only run and cycle and prevaricate with lots of housework but I also sit down and deal with the paperwork, the dreaded VAT returns, the VAT verification check  and the even  more dreaded other tax papers. I try and keep the papers filed, desperately try and find the purse which the bread rounder last Saturday misplaced and which held all last weeks receipts. But after all that, I also try and keep the bigger picture going. Like any other business, we need to keep going, keep growing and increase that profit margin which keeps the business alive and makes my life less scary.

We do not only bake bread but we also have to keep selling it, keep our customers happy, stand out from the crowd and be noticed. To that effect we do many odd things, like selling bread to the Duchess of Cornwall which was interesting but boring and among others also an annual dawn chorus which is anything but. If you missed it, remember it for next year. Every May, we schedule to early Sundays in a row and invite our customers for a dawn chorus walk in a Kilfane woodland. Between 5 and 7am ( in the morning, yes, but it is bright – I promise) you get to walk, listen to the birds while the husband tries to explain which bird is saying what. At 7am, everyone adjournes back to the bakehouse and we have breakfast at a long table, slightly squashed but cosy and very tasty.

There is something about early mornings,  especially in the summer when the sun shines before we are finished work. Every year at the dawn chorus, or at the darkness into Light or pretty much anywhere you go where people meet early and well before their normal day starts, you hear people promising to use the days better, to not miss “this best part of the day” so often. As with most good resolutions, we are weak on follow through but the idea remains that our energies are high in the morning – even if the rest of my family disputes this fact strenuously. 

After the bread round is planning and scheming. With only 38 days left till we close for our three week summer break, the energy is already coming through. We cracked our piggy bank of extra coins from the market money box yesterday and went to Bassett’s in Thomastown for a lunch staff meeting. They have recently opened and have a wonderful place with an excellent lunch menu ( shall have to go back and check on the dinner menu soon) and ideas were plentyfull. The bake house with a difference we will stay as we develop and change – or at least talk about it. We are actively looking for more markets – and that is not in Australia, John.  So if you know one, let me know.  Actually you could do me a favour and follow this blog and send it to your friends. I promise to be reasonably interesting and sometimes entertaining. Talk to you after the run.......... walk maybe.