Loaf Community Bakery – pt 2

community bakery loafLoaf Community Bakery is our new bakery in Cotteridge, South Birmingham, specialising in sourdough and other artisan breads. Bread is baked at the home of Loaf director Tom Baker, in both a conventional and traditional wood-fired earth oven. The bakery sells bread through a “˜community supported bakery’ scheme, as well as selling some wholesale to specialist local delis. Bread is made with organic flour, grown and milled in the UK.

Thanks to everyone who responded to the two polls about the bakery – they’ve helped inform what day we’re going to bake, and the price. I’ve set the price by taking the mean of all the options voted for, and multiplying it by 4 for a months worth of bread.

Loaves are going to be baked on a Friday, and need to be collected that evening. Collection is from Cotteridge currently, although an alternative Saturday collection point will be arranged depending on the location of subscribers. A large white sourdough (Cotteridge Sourdough) and a large 100% rye sourdough (Revolution Rye) are available initially. Both breads keep well for 5 days and are suitable for freezing. Other specialities such as brioche and ciabatta will be available occasionally on a first-come first-served basis.

Invest in Loaf Community Bakery and subscribe now for just £11 a month!

We’ll be supplying a weekly loaf to subscribers from mid-January onwards, so get in touch soon if you want to subscribe as we can only take a limited number – email tom@loafonline.co.uk to register your interest.

Meanwhile, answer this poll:

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Loaf Community Bakery

breadThe new year brings big news for loaf – we are launching Birmingham’s first community supported bakery. What the heck is a community supported bakery I hear you ask? The idea is simple, and it’s borrowed from the American community supported agriculture (CSA) model. Each month you ‘subscribe’ to a farm (or in this case, a bakery), giving a set amount of money upfront. Because of your monthly investment and commitment to the farm (bakery), the farmer (baker) has a guaranteed income and so can invest in equipment, tools, supplies, labour etc, in order to repay your investment with an agreed amount of produce every week. The farmer (baker) gets some security and a leg-up in surviving against the industrial food system, and you get wholesome produce, produced responsibly and sustainably, at a fair price.

Loaf Community Bakery will be launching in January 2010, and will provide bread to a limited number of monthly subscribers. Some of our bread may also be available at a local retail outlet for those who don’t want to commit to subscribing. However for the immediate future this will be a very limited scheme, we’ll take up to about 20 subscribers who’ll need to be able to collect their weekly loaf from Cotteridge, South Birmingham, although we will look at an additional pick-up point depending on demand. The bread will be mainly, but not exclusively sourdough, and mainly made with UK-grown organic wheat and rye flour. There’ll definitely be a white sourdough loaf and a 100% rye (which is almost impossible to find these days, especially fresh). Over the next few weeks, we’ll be asking you on here and on twitter how Loaf Community Bakery can best serve you – what day, time, price, variety etc. In the meantime if you have any thoughts or questions please leave them in the comments section below, or send an email to tom@loafonline.co.uk.

If you’ve read this far, why not answer this poll:

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Still time to respond to our last poll too:

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