SiteSelf Stand-in — Plain

Category: Behind the Counter

How the bakery actually works.

  • What happens to the bread we do not sell

    What happens to the bread we do not sell

    We bake for the day and we try to sell out, but some days we misjudge the weather, a wholesale order changes, or a school holiday empties the street. So what happens to the bread that is left at three o’clock?

    The same afternoon

    Whole loaves go to the Beacon Street shelter, which collects at half past three. They have taken our bread since our first winter, and they are the reason we have never had to throw away a whole loaf.

    The next morning

    Anything cut or broken is dried overnight in the cooling oven and turned into breadcrumbs, which we sell in paper bags by the till, and croutons, which go to the café next door for their soup. Stale croissants become almond croissants, which is, frankly, the best thing that can happen to a croissant.

    What we are still working on

    Pastry scraps are the hard part. Butter-rich dough does not keep and does not donate well. For now we bake the offcuts into small twists for the staff, which is a solution everyone here supports, but we would like a better one. If you run a community kitchen nearby and have an idea, come and talk to us.

  • Why the lights are on at 4 a.m.

    People ask us two questions more than any other. The first is whether the country loaf is sourdough (it is). The second is why the lights in the back are on at four in the morning. The honest answer is that bread keeps its own hours, and ours are the ones it keeps.

    Golden croissants piled on a tray
    Photo: ViajeroExtraviado, CC0, via Wikimedia Commons

    A sourdough loaf that comes out of the oven at seven was started almost two days earlier. The starter is fed on the first afternoon, the dough is mixed the next morning, it rises slowly through the day and then spends the night in the cold room. By four the next morning it is ready, and it will not wait politely until a more civilised hour.

    Pastry is similar. Croissant dough is laminated the afternoon before and shaped at the end of the day, so that it proves overnight. At four, the first job is turning on the oven, which takes almost an hour to come up to temperature. The second job is coffee.

    A typical morning

    1. 4:00: oven on, dough out of the cold room.
    2. 4:45: first loaves scored and loaded.
    3. 5:30: pastry goes in as the bread comes out.
    4. 6:15: wholesale orders packed for the bicycle.
    5. 7:00: doors open, and the queue is already there.

    We have tried starting later. The bread was fine; the queue was not. So four o’clock it is.