After ten annual events, how do you describe a baking weekend? Every combination of bakers interacting with dough has been photographed a hundred times so that background items are needed to identify the year and location.
This year we were in Twickenham which, compared with previous rural venues is kinda weird. Getting a bus followed by a train followed by another bus before you can get your hands in the flour is bewildering for a country girl especially when you’re trying to keep up with Stig who is in full London fitness. Then there was the heat. Outside it was hot and airless. In the catering kitchen hired for the weekend it was burning. Being starter monitor I made a big refreshment Friday evening – by morning it looked like it had been left in the Sahara for a week. Saturday morning’s refreshment peaked in two hours.
Anyway, my photos this year are more signs than pictures. There is one human. Appropriately it is Baker Biker Ben the only person who has been to all ten events:
The other person there should have been a photo of after a gap of ten years is Jeremy Shapiro but Jeremy is the original Man who Never Was. He only exists when he is being photographed alongside some well known baker or other trendy food producer and, sadly, we are long past any status we once might have had.
Anyway, back to the beginning and Bangor Station:
I’d just been baking rye to go with cheese samples for Carrie Rimes https://www.facebook.com/CosynCymru/ who is producing fantastic, award winning ewes cheese in Bethesda so I was amused by this even though Carrs Water Biscuits are basically OK.
The next sign I had to pass was only a couple of hundred yards from the venue:
Fortunately I was wearing my garlic necklace, averted my eyes, and strode resolutely on.
But then a more welcoming, reassuring sign signalling that cider could not by too far away:
Yes it’s Adam’s new eco-van!
I have to say that the Committee of the South did an excellent job of organising the weekend. Stig not only had the menus printed she had the quantities scaled for the size of the group. Trouble was on Saturday night when I was in charge of the evening meal I prepped 2K of onions before I noticed there were two columns, one for 15 portions and one for 60 …
Great to see Nina again who flew in from Denmark, and four first-timers Peter, Alex, Julia and Liz which made for a balanced group of old and new.
Real photos – you know, actual people making actual bread – including the cake I made (of course it was sourdough) – here
The PArtisan Baker 