Saturday night saw Loaf do it’s first ever (and perhaps the first ever?*) pop-up pizza takeaway. After the disastrous start to Saturday morning, the day turned fairly rapidly into one of the craziest and most fun of my loaf life. On the way back from the Jewellery Quarter towing our trailer of rubble, Jane and I tossed around ideas of how to use up all our ingredients ranging from making loaves of bread to sell the next day, to making quiches for sale at some local shops, to what we finally settled on doing – a pop-up pizza night. Over a calming cup of tea, we devised a flyer, wrote a blog post, and got the word out on Twitter about the pizza marathon, then headed out to pound the pavement and deliver some flyers to our  neighbours. Twitter went absolutely crazy during the day, in a large part due to Jenny Drew’s hardcore retweeting and social networking on our behalf (thanks Jenny!). We were the most talked about thing in Birmingham for most of Saturday and the top trend in the UK for about 15 minutes – google analytics showed visitors to this website tripled on Saturday, so thanks to everyone who helped get the word out there.

The tension was building here at Loaf HQ ready for the 6pm start – the fire was lit in my earth oven, friends were drafted in to man phones and door, ingredients and rolling pins were laid out, and aprons were donned. We had a few pre-orders via twitter and other means, and the phone went crazy for the first hour of service, meaning people had to wait a little longer than the advertised ten minutes, so thanks everyone for your patience. The pizza’s were great on the whole with great feedback on twitter and text, although in the hurry a few may have come out overly ash-laden on the bottom (sorry if you got one of those!). By the end of the night I had met lots of amazing people, neighbours I never knew I had, and cooked about 70 pizza’s. I think we just about clinched victory out of the jaws of defeat!

A couple of special shout-outs to finish this post then. A massive sorry to everyone at the 24 Carrots Market for letting you down – I hope to return at a later date and do something extra special. A huge thank you to everyone who came and bought a pizza or seven (you know who you are). And finally massive thanks to my helpers on the night – the cool, calm, and collected Mike ‘Hello Loaf Pizza’s!’ Skinner, the charming host Martin ‘Martino Evano’ Evans, and my beautiful wife Jane, the fastest pizza maker in Cotteridge – I couldn’t have done it without you!

Finally, shall we do it again, whaddayarecon?

Cheers, Tom.

* I expect the first pizza’s were sold pop-up style in Naples all those years ago, so it’s nothing new really!