22 August 2023
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're bringing back the Maslin sourdough, even though it never went away. We're also putting some prices up and closing on Tuesdays. See below for why.
Note we are open on Friday and Saturday this week having scrubbed the bakery and redecorated the shop. Welcome back!
Scroll down for this week’s lunch menu and cookery school spaces.
🍞 Pre-order your bread and pastries 🥐
We’ll have plenty on the shelves all week, with lunches served from noon on weekdays.
This week we are open:
Friday: 12-6
Saturday: 8-1
From next week we are open:
Wed - Fri: 12-6
Saturday: 8-1
A few years ago we stopped calling our brown sourdough "Maslin" and started calling it "Wholemeal Sourdough". We did this because people kept asking us what a "Maslin" was, because we want our bread to be accessible and not alienating, and because it was the most wholemeal of our sourdoughs, so what's the harm?
Well, it's not 100% wholemeal. It's a blend of wholemeal, white and rye flour, and that's not something we should sell as a wholemeal loaf.
Recently there's been a bit of a push from the Real Bread Campaign around the mislabelling of bread and there's a section in The Bread and Flour Regulations (1998) stating that the word "wholemeal" should not be used unless all flour ingredients are wholemeal. And since we're long-standing members of the Real Bread Campaign, it would be a bit weird not to go along with this.
But what is a Maslin? The word itself has a similar origin to "miscellany" and broadly means a mixture composed of different materials. So a Maslin Loaf is a loaf made of a variety of grains – in our case wholemeal, white and rye. It's a mix, a blend, a maslin, and it's been a Loaf staple since we opened in 2012. Even though it's not always been called that.
(The question is now begged, will we do a 100% wholemeal loaf? Watch this space...)
The cost of running Loaf has gone up a lot over the past couple of years. This is, of course, happening to across the board. Everyone in our supply chain has seen costs increase and are passing that to us. We spent this spring and summer looking for efficiencies and savings across the business while maintaining our standards but it's got to the point where, in order to stay in business, we're having to put our prices up.
Cookery school classes got their new prices last week and most bakery prices are going up from this Friday. You can see the prices of the core baked goods on this page and lunch prices have increased by a similar amount.
We've thought long and hard about this over the summer and unfortunately we cannot make Tuesdays work with the current Loaf business model. So from next week Loaf will be open Wednesday to Saturday. Our hours on those days will stay the same.
Tuesday is not our busiest day and, while we do very well with lunches, the massive increase in energy costs is hitting it hard. Keeping the ovens off for one day should make a big difference.
Over the next few months the bakers are going to use this time to overhaul how we run the bakery, with an eye to changing things up next year as we get ready to move into the new building.
While reducing hours never feels good, we're seeing this as a positive decision to give us the space and time to ensure Loaf is ready to give you bread at a high quality and a fair price, whatever challenges the world throws at us next.
We will review Tuesday opening in November.
It's been a while since the awesome Pip launched a new hot sauce and this looks like a good'un. Made in collaboration with Attic Brew Co up the road, Brewed is her first fermented hot sauce, made with "fruity pepper, spicy chilli and sweet onion. The process of fermentation produces acidity that cuts through the spice, whilst drawing out unusual flavours from the ingredients".
A gaggle of bottles of Brewed arrived this week so be sure and check them out.
Lunches are made fresh weekdays for 12 noon.
Our menu for the week — with ingredients and allergens — is on the website.
The following classes have spaces as of this newsletter being posted.
Loaf’s all-day classes:
Loaf’s evening classes:
Haseen’s evening classes:
Lap’s all-day classes:
Lap’s evening classes:
Classes for November will be released mid-late September. You can sign up to alert lists for specific classes here.
Thanks for all your continued support. See you next week!
Team Loaf: Molly, Ian, Nancy, Sarah, Pete, Dave, Dorit, Martha, Neil & Rach
Website: loaf.coop
Socials: Instagram / Mastodon / Twitter / Facebook