The Black Sheep Baker's blog

Hi all,

So 150 million years ago I had a sort of compulsion to give up the day job, pick up the peel and become a baker.  It may not have been exactly 150 million years ago, the timeline is a little fuzzy, but it sure does feel like a long time to me.  

In the intervening years I did go on to realise my ambition and after many a misadventure along the way I'm sitting here today writing this post in a comfortable sunlit booth in the front of my own little bakery in a pleasant seaside town in the north east of England.

Sometimes, I think, it's best to start telling a story by jumping to the end. Especially when that story is still alive and unfolding.

It's Sunday morning and the bakery is open once again. On the sunlit shelves lie gently whispering baguettes,  butter laden pastries and warm, plain loaves.  Sunday bread.  Bread to make you feel good inside and sprinkle a touch of nostalgia over your long, lazy breakfast.

Through the open door to the street outside waft the irrestible scents of the ovens offering.

People fall in haphazardly. 

Hi

Here goes my first attempt at posting a recipe.  Alas I forgot to take any photos of this bread which is not altogether very helpful.  The recipe is also pretty rough and ready but this is a hard bread to get wrong.

For those that aren't familiar with Stottie bread it is a flat bread that originates from the north east of England.  It takes it's name (I assume) from being 'stotted'  (bounced) off the floor of the oven.

Ingredients:

250g ripe starter (@ approx 80%)

200g potato flakes

Hi all 

Firstly- apologies for the lack of postings to those of you kind enough to read and post on this blog.  The past few months have been a mixture of intense activity combined with long periods of extremely frustrating inactivity.  I won't go into the specifics of why things have been progressing so slowly because I don't want to rock the boat where fragile inter-personal relationships are involved!

A bakery re-born

Hi and welcome to my first blog and my first tentative steps into the bakery business.