20 February 2024
This is the 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 is the last Weekly Loaf in it's current form! Don't panic though. More info below. Also, cobs!
Scroll down for this week’s lunch menu and cookery school classes.
🍞 Pre-order your bread and pastries 🥐
We’ll have plenty on the shelves all week, with lunches served from noon on weekdays.
Our opening hours are:
Wed - Fri: 12-6
Saturday: 8-1
Cobs on pre-order
Last year we started doing cobs (aka buns, batches, baps, barms or simply bread rolls, depending on your region) and they were immediately popular. We've now formalised them into the baking schedule and they're available for pre-order along with the rest of our core range.
Cobs are 60p each or £2 for four. Order them here.
The Weekly Loaf evolves...
We started a weekly newsletter during the first lockdowns in 2020 as a necessity and make the fatal mistake of naming it "The Weekly Loaf" and then had to stick to that! Since then we've kept to the weekly schedule most of the time, but not always, and missing the last couple of weeks has caused us to rethink how we do this.
From next week Loaf will publish two newsletters. A short weekly bulletin will feature what's for lunch, what's special in the bakery and upcoming cookery school classes. This will come out at the start of the week.
The second newsletter be more of a magazine, coming out every 2-4 weeks and focusing on the issues close to Loaf's heart – sustainably building community through food – with the lofty goal of maybe producing a print publication one day.
For the time being, everyone is subscribed to both, so you don't need to do anything. In the future we'll look at a way to get one or the other.
We're lucky that we started a newsletter years ago and now have a decent audience. One reason we're keen to build it up is, it gives us a platform that is not skewed by a corporate algorithm. Over the years we've seen Twitter and Facebook fade to irrelevance and while Instagram Stories are a major channel for us, there's no saying how long that will last.
We'll continue to look at ways to get our messages to people – we're dabbling with Mastodon, Bluesky and Threads and are contemplating a WhatsApp community – but email will always be the core of what we do.
Discover Co-ops workshop in Stirchley
Are you co-op curious? Thinking of starting a co-op, or converting an existing business or organisation into one? Then this event might just be right for you!
Along with our sibling co-ops in Stirchley we've long wanted to formalise how we offer advice about the way we run ourselves, and this is the first stab at it.
Speakers from Loaf, Birmingham Bike Foundry and Artefact, backed up by the wealth of knowledge of Co-operatives UK's business support division, will be at Stirchley Baths on Saturday 2nd March, from 11:30am to 3pm.
Places are limited so get more details and register your interest here.
Cookery school classes
The following classes have spaces as of this newsletter being posted. There's not much left - thanks!
We've nearly finalised dates for April onwards. You can sign up to alert lists for specific classes here and we'll email you as soon as they're out.
Haseen’s evening classes:
Lap’s all-day classes:
- Sausage & Charcuterie: Sat 24 Feb
Lunches this week
Wednesday
- Tarka daal with sourdough (Ve)
Thursday
- Soup: Roasted cauliflower and coconut soup with sea salt focaccia (Ve)
Friday
- Curry: Sweet potato and kale spicy peanut stew with sourdough (Ve)
- Salt beef on challah bun
Wed - Fri
- Sourdough pizza: Caramelised leeks, potato, blue cheese and mozzarella (V)
- Ham and cheese croissant
- Tomato, spinach 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.
Thanks for all your continued support. See you next week!
Team Loaf: Michael, Dorit, Dave, Mina, Neil, Martha, Molly, Rach, Sarah & Pete
Website: loaf.coop
Socials: Instagram / Mastodon / Threads / Bluesky / Twitter / Facebook