This is the weekly bulletin from Loaf in Stirchley, with our specials, lunches and cookery school classes.
🍞 Pre-order your Bread and Pastries 🥐
Pre-order the bread and pastries to ensure you get what you want. Please note there will be no Pain au Chocolat available on Wednesdays and Thursdays during the summer time and you can now pre-order Almond Croissants for Saturdays!
Despite our Pay it Forward scheme being paused for now, you can still give money and food donations to B30 Foodbank through us. We’ll be totting up these monthly and sending them on to B30 Foodbank. Just ask at the till if this is something you would like to do.
Our opening hours are:
Wed-Fri: 12-6
Saturday: 8-1
Visit us at 1421 Pershore Road, Stirchley, B30 2JL (map)
Sweets This Week
Plum Cake
Peanut Butter Crispy Squares (Ve)
Banana, Coconut, Oat Slice (Ve)
Everything Blondie
Raspberry & White Chocolate Blondie
Cherry Chocolate Croissant Pudding
Saturday Sourdough Specials
Cheddar & Chilli
7 Seeds & grains
No reservations - first-come, first-served.
This Week's Lunches
Wednesday
Tarka Daal with Sourdough (Ve)
Thursday
Focaccia Sandwich: Buffalo cauliflower fritters, lettuce, pickled onions & vegan garlic mayo (Ve) w/ optional Feta (V)
Friday
Curry: Butternut, spinach and red pepper (Ve) w/ Sourdough
Salt Beef with Pickles + Mustard on Challah
Wed - Fri
Sourdough Pizza: Courgette, ricotta, chilli, basil and Mozzarella (V)
Wed - Fri
Ham and Cheese Croissant
Rocket Pesto & Cheese Croissant (V)
Wed – Sat:
Sausage Roll
Vegetable Roll (Ve)
Lunches are made fresh weekdays from 12 noon.
Our menu for the week — with ingredients and allergens — is on the website.
Cookery School Classes
Our October & November Cookery School Classes Are Live!
Lots of you have been asking for new dates, and they’re already proving popular - spaces are filling up fast, so don’t hang about if you’d like to join us.
See below for newly released courses with Lap, including Sausage & Charcuterie and Seafood, with more dates with Haseen coming soon.
We also have 3 last minute spaces up for grabs for our what-was-sold-out Handmade Pasta course TOMORROW (Wednesday 10th September). You can book your space here.
All-Day Classes with Availability:
🍞 Bread: Back to Basics 🍞
Saturday 1st November 2025 9:30am - 4pm
Bread: Back to Basics is a day-long bread experience. In a world where real bread is so hard to come by, this course will equip you to make consistently good, wholesome bread at home. This hands-on course takes bread back to its essential ingredients - flour, water, salt and yeast - and teaches you a great repertoire of beautiful breads based on these basic building blocks.
🥖 Simply Sourdough 🥖 - only a few places remaining!
Saturday 27th September 2025 9:30am–4pm, Saturday 11th October 2025 9:30am – 4pm & Saturday 15th November 2025 9:30am – 4pm
Spend a day learning the art of sourdough where you’ll cover everything from caring for your starter to kneading, shaping, proving, and baking both wheat and rye sourdough loaves. You’ll take home your own dough to bake the next day, plus starters and full recipes to continue baking confidently at home.
🦞 Seafood Masterclass 🦞
Saturday 18th October 2025 10:30am – 4pm - NEW!
A hands-on course with Lap-fai Lee exploring all things seafood. You’ll learn how to prep and cook everything from mackerel, seabass, and lemon sole to squid, prawns, oysters - with both Asian and European techniques.
🐷 Sausage & Charcuterie 🐷
Saturday 25th October 2025 10am – 3:30pm - NEW!
In this course led by Lap-fai Lee, you’ll learn to craft and link fresh sausages like merguez, boudin, Cumberland, and smoked garlic, as well as curing your own guanciale from pig head, pancetta from belly, and dry-cured salami and chorizo. You’ll even take home your cured creations once they’re ready!
🥐 Sweet Breads & Viennoiserie 🥐
Saturday 8th November 2025 9:30am – 4pm - 1 more place remaining!
A hands-on course exploring sweet breads and viennoiserie. You’ll learn to laminate dough and bake treats like cinnamon buns, cardamom knots, hot cross buns, croissants, pain au chocolat, danishes, and more.
Evening Classes with Availability:
🔪 Knife Skills & Maintenance 🔪
Tuesday 14th October 2025 6:30–9:30pm - NEW!
Learn how to prep with precision. Lap will guide you through essential knife grips, cutting techniques, sharpening, honing, and care - skills that elevate every kitchen routine.
🍝 Handmade Pasta 🍝 - all dates selling fast!
Wednesday 15th October 2025 6:30-9:30pm, Wednesday 5th November 2025 6:30-9:30pm & Wednesday 26th November 2025 6:30-9:30pm
This course will teach you the skills to make fresh pasta at home, with fillings and sauces to accompany it. We will be showing you both hand rolling and cutting techniques as well as using a pasta machine. Recipes include a making fresh egg pasta to pair with classic sauces. We will make a classic carbonara, puttanesca and tortillini filled with ricotta and spinach.
🥟 Dumplings 🥟
Tuesday 21st October 2025 6:30–9:30pm - NEW!
You’ll learn to make dumpling dough and fillings from scratch, including vegetarian, pork, Sichuan lamb wontons, and crispy fried dim sum-style wontons.
🍜 Ramen 🍜
Wednesday 22nd October 2025 6:30–9:30pm - NEW!
A workshop with Lap-fai Lee that dives deep into the art of broth, noodles, toppings, and seasoning. Expect rich flavours, smart technique, and the know‑how to recreate at home.
🌶️ Thai 🌶️
Wednesday 29th October 2025 6:30–9:30pm - NEW!
Explore Thai cuisine through authentic spice blends, curries and sauces. Hosted by Lap-fai Lee.
Coming Soon:
Baking with Heritage Grains - more dates will be released.
New Jams & Preserves making course - dates to be released soon!
Booking Info:
All equipment, recipes, aprons & refreshments provided.
Please check the individual class restrictions for dietary requirements and allergies, and get in touch with any queries.
Spaces are limited and booked on a first-come, first-served basis upon receipt of payment. We require 100% payment in advance for all of our courses.
It’s Sourdough September!
Each September, the Real Bread Campaign uses its annual celebration of Sourdough September to highlight one of the oldest and most rewarding ways of making bread. Rather than just another awareness month, Sourdough September highlights the unique benefits of Sourdough, for our health, our communities and the planet as a whole.
Over the course of September, the campaign highlights the stark fact that a lot of the bread on supermarket shelves is highly processed and is produced using industrial shortcuts. Sourdough September’s purpose is to ask us to consider the benefits of what ‘real bread’ actually means: flour, water, salt and time. That simplicity can be a powerful thing. Slower fermentation in Sourdough helps develop deeper, more complex flavours, and helps the bread become easier to digest for many. The natural leavening process allows more nutrients to become available to the body that are simply not as accessible in other types of bread, especially industrially produced loaves.
The campaign also focuses on ways that sourdough helps support shifts towards more sustainable food systems. Sourdough bakeries like ours and the home bakers we help to teach tend to favour more local ingredients, shorter supply chains and traditional skills that are being lost a time goes on. Choosing Sourdough often means supporting small businesses that keep this ancient craft alive, rather than contributing to the large machine of industrial baking.
Sourdough September is a celebration. A celebration of what makes Sourdough great to make and great to eat. It invites people to experiment- buying their first Sourdough Loaf, trying a variety that they have seen in a bakery but been unsure of or nurturing a starter at home. The hands-on element of making Sourdough yourself draws you into the story of bread itself, it is a living thing that built communities through nourishment and the warming centre of a kitchen, the oven.
Sourdough September encourages us to ask questions about bread, food culture and sustainability- reminding us that an everyday staple, a loaf of bread, can connect us back to a tradition of community, tradition and care.
Loaf offers many ways to get involved with Sourdough. We give away our starter for free! So if you are interested in trying your hand at baking your own, this is a great place to start! We sell Spelt, Rye, White and our Maslin, which is a blend of all three of these flours in one loaf. We also offer our Simply Sourdough course, which goes through all of the basics you need to start your own journey into Sourdough, or to come and get tips to improve your skills.
Over this month look out for our Sourdough Specials and, if you are interested in the amazing work done by the Real Bread Campaign, go to https://www.sustainweb.org/realbread/ for more information.
Give the Gift of Learning!
If you’re thinking of gifting one class but you are not sure which one would be preferred you could buy a gift voucher instead.
Our vouchers can be purchased in any value you like for redemption against future bookings. Vouchers purchased online will give you a downloadable pdf which can be emailed to the recipient directly, or to you for printing and giving to them by hand. Alternatively you can come to us and buy vouchers in the shop.
Thanks for all your Continued Support
See you soon!
Rach, Neil, Molly, Zahrah, Mina, Pete, Andy, Kate, Dorit, Michael, Dave, Lee & Fliss
Address: 1421 Pershore Road, Stirchley, B30 2JL - map
Website: loaf.coop
Updates on: Instagram
Review us on: Google | Tripadvisor