September 27 2022
This is the weekly newsletter from Loaf in Stirchley, keeping you abreast of our bakery and cookery school, and other news we think you might be interested in.
This week we have a look at the Sheffield Wheat Experiment, where growing is distributed across hundreds of people across the city. We also reveal our new badge!
We’ll have plenty of bread and pastries on the shelves all day, with lunches served from noon on weekdays.
Scroll down for this week’s lunch menu, cookery school vacancies and community news.
Our opening hours are:
Wednesday: 12-4
Thursday: 12-6
Friday: 12-6
Saturday: 8-1
The Breadcrumbs
🥖 Our friends at Leeds Bread Co-op are fundraising for a new mixer as theirs is on its last legs. LBC has long been an inspiration to us and we know how critical a good mixer is to a bakery. Good luck, guys!
🥖 Speaking of co-ops, did you know they’re the norm in Finland? This article was quite eye-opening.
🥖 Our fragrant neighbour Hedge has started a fortnightly flower subscription club. For £30 a fortnight you’ll get a selection of locally grown flowers delivered to your home with advice on how to arrange them.
🥖 Quarterhorse have delivered a new batch of coffees for the shop. Look for Palomino Filter Blend, Media Luna and Volcán from Colombia, and Venkids Valley from India.
🥖 Molly’s back on the sweets shift and is making the brown butter plum cake for you lucky people this week.
New badges
£3 each. Perfect for your apron! Available at the bakery counter from this week.
Grain in small batches
If someone mentions growing wheat, you probably think of wide expanses of fields and combine harvesters. But wheat and other cereals can be grown on a much smaller scale in a surprisingly wide range of places.
The Sheffield Wheat Experiment is an intriguing project that exploits this, with hundreds of people growing relatively small amounts of wheat in their gardens, allotments or even pots. You could think of it as a distributed urban farm, using surplus land and manageable amounts of people’s time to connect them with the source of their food.
This ticks all of Loaf’s boxes and we’re going to keep a close eye on their progress with the aim of doing something similar here one day. A Stirchley Loaf made from Stirchley grain is an idea too delicious to ignore.
The Sheffield project is still quite large scale, involving many people to produce a significant amount of grain. What if you just want to grow for your own use?
Some of you with allotments may know of Charles Dowding who has become the guru of the no-dig method of growing food. Over the last year he grew 31 clumps of rye on his smallholding and in this video he takes us through the steps to turn the rye into flour for his bread. This is perfectly doable on an allotment or back garden.
Finally, here’s a photo Pete took while on a walk exploring Coventry’s ring road of some wheat growing by the busy traffic. It really can grow anywhere — though you might not want to mill these grains!
Lunches this week
Wednesday
- Curry: Tarka daal with sourdough (Ve)
Thursday
- Soup: Roasted tomato and red pepper soup with mozzarella and cheddar focaccia (V)
Friday
- Chilli: Sweet potato and bean with sourdough (Ve)
- Salt beef on challah
Wed — Fri
- Sourdough pizza: Grilled corn, fennel, sun-dried tomato, mushroom, olive and mozzarella with white sauce (V)
- Ham and cheese croissant
- Pine nut pesto and cheese croissant (V)
Wed — Sat:
- Sausage rolls
- Vegetable rolls (V)
Lunches are made fresh weekdays for 12 noon.
Our menu for the week — with ingredients and allergens — is on the website.
Cookery school classes
The following classes have vacancies as of this newsletter being posted.
Loaf’s all-day classes:
- Bread — Back to Basics: Tue 4 Oct, Tue 8 Nov
- Simply Sourdough: Sat 12 Nov, Sat 26 Nov
- Sweet Breads and Viennoiserie: Tue 1 Nov, Tue 22 Nov
Haseen’s evening classes:
Lap’s all-day classes:
- Seafood Masterclass: Sat 8 Oct, Sat 5 Nov
- Sausage & Charcuterie: Tue 11 Oct, Tue 29 Nov
Lap’s evening classes:
- Thai Cooking: Wed 5 Oct, Wed 9 Nov
- Sushi: Thu 27 Oct
- Knife Skills & Maintenance: Wed 2 Nov
We release new dates as soon as possible, based on tutor availability. You can sign up to alert lists for specific classes here.
Thanks for all your continued support. See you next week!
Team Loaf: Neil, Sarah, Pete, Ian, Molly, Dorit, Martha, Nancy & Rach