4 September 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 our cookery school is back with Dumplings on Wednesday evening. We also have some exciting plans for Sourdough September and are in need of your apples!
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.
Our opening hours are:
Wed - Fri: 12-6
Saturday: 8-1
We want your apples!
No-one wants to think about Christmas while we're in (probably) the last heatwave of the year, but there's one very important festive job we need to do this month - make the filling for our legendary mince pies!
Apples are one of the key ingredients and we always like to source them from our regular customers. If you have a windfall happening in your garden and don't know what to do with them, bring them to Loaf and we'll add them to the mix. All varieties are welcome, from cookers to eaters to crab.
Last year we had more than we could deal with so we're limiting donations to next week only - Wednesday 13th to Saturday 16th. Any excess will be found a home with one of the local jam or cider makers, or failing that, expect lots of apple-related goodies in our sweets display.
Loaf's cookery school is back this week
The first classes start this week at Loaf's cookery school. On Wednesday 6th we have the always popular Dumplings with Lap-fai Lee.
You will be making dumplings from scratch and then boiling, deep frying or pan frying them. Lap will tutor you through making the dough and preparing vegetarian and pork dumplings. You’ll also make crispy, deep fried dim sum style wontons (pork & prawn) and Sichuan wontons (lamb).
Then on Saturday we have Loaf's Sweet Breads and Viennoiserie class.
You’ll spend the day with Loaf – learning the art of dough lamination and creating classic sweet treats such as cinnamon buns, cardamom knots and hot cross buns. You’ll also be turning your laminated dough into four classic viennoiserie – croissants, pain au chocolat, pain aux raisin, and danish pastries.
You can see all the upcoming classes on our calendar and at the bottom of this newsletter.
Baking with Desem for Sourdough September
It's that time again when we spend a month thinking about sourdough bread even more than we do the rest of the year. Sourdough September is the annual celebration of all things sourdough from the Real Bread Campaign and this year we're joining in with a little experiment:
Desem (pronounced DAY-zum) is a style of sourdough starter popular in Belgium. Unlike the "standard" method of leaving the starter to mix with bacteria and yeasts in the ambient air, the Desen method buries the starter in whole wheat flour so it can only develop with organisms in the flour itself. Every so often it peeks out, which means it's feeding time again.
Day 1: The original ball of dough, placed in a bed of wholemeal flour and covered.
Day 3: The dough is growing, feeding on the surrounding flour and peeks out to say hello.
Day 3: Inside the ball of dough you can see how active the yeast and other microbes have been. This was fed and and returned to the covered bed of flour for a few more days.
The starter is now seven days old and we plan to bake some test loaves this week, learning how it behaves and how to work with it. This will take a while for us to get right so don't expect to see Desem loaves on the shelves for a few weeks, but we'll keep you updated here.
So much arrived from Jacky's pantry!
We took a seasonal delivery from Jacky's Preserves and now have 23, that's twenty three, varieties on our shelves, from the old favourites to some intriguing new mixes. Here's four that caught our eye.
Lunches this week
Wednesday
- Tarka daal with sourdough (Ve)
Thursday
- Ciabatta sandwich: Falafel with baba ghanoush, pickled carrots and onions (Ve)
Friday
- Curry: Aubergine, potato and green bean curry with sourdough (Ve)
- Salt beef on challah bun
Wed – Sat:
- Sausage rolls
- Vegetable rolls (V)
Wed - Fri
- Sourdough pizza: Creamy ricotta base, lemon & herb courgettes, crispy shallots, parmesan & mozzarella (V)
- Ham and cheese croissant
- Pine nut pesto and cheese croissant (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 spaces as of this newsletter being posted.
Loaf’s all-day classes:
- Bread — Back to Basics: Sat 23 Sep, Tue 24 Oct
- Simply Sourdough: Sat 16 Sep, Sat 21 Oct
- Sweet Breads and Viennoiserie: Sat 9 Sep, Sat 14 Oct
- Baking with Heritage Grains Returns in November
- Wholegrain Baking with Tom Baker: Sat 28 Oct
Loaf’s evening classes:
- Handmade Pasta: Tue 12 Sep, Wed 11 Oct
Haseen’s evening classes:
Lap’s all-day classes:
- Sausage & Charcuterie: Sat 4 Nov
- Seafood Masterclass: Sat 7 Oct
Lap’s evening classes:
- Thai: Wed 13 Sep
- Sushi: Thu 21 Sep
- Ramen: Thu 4 Oct
- Dumplings: Wed 6 Sep
- Knife Skills: Wed 20 Sep
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: Sarah, Rach, Molly, Dorit, Dave, Martha, Ian, Neil, Pete & Nancy
Website: loaf.coop
Socials: Instagram / Mastodon / Twitter / Facebook