We’re really pleased to welcome Matt & Pete’s Photo School to Loaf HQ. See below for a flyer with some information about classes for beginners, starting in January. You can read more about Matt & Pete, including upcoming courses (such as tonight’s night time photography walk) on their website. They’re also doing gift vouchers; perfect for Christmas (hint hint!)
A brand new beer bar has opened in Birmingham City Centre: Brewdog Birmingham, and Loaf are proud to be providing some of the bread for their menu – a special Brewdog Hardcore IPA bread that they serve with a great cheese and meat platter, and as part of a locally made sausage dish. You can find Brewdog Birmingham at 81-87 John Bright Street, Birmingham, B1 1BL.
You can still get Loaf Beer Bread every Thursday at Stirchley Wines and Spirits, so don’t fret if you like to keep your beer and bread activities Stirchley based!
A brand new beer bar has opened in Birmingham City Centre: Brewdog Birmingham, and Loaf are proud to be providing some of the bread for their menu – a special Brewdog Hardcore IPA bread that they serve with a great cheese and meat platter, and as part of a locally made sausage dish. You can find Brewdog Birmingham at 81-87 John Bright Street, Birmingham, B1 1BL.
You can still get Loaf Beer Bread every Thursday at Stirchley Wines and Spirits, so don’t fret if you like to keep your beer and bread activities Stirchley based!
2013 should be a fab year for Loaf, and we’ve decided to kick it off with a great new series of short workshops called Kitchen Essentials. Taught by our talented baker and chef Dom Clarke, these workshops are aimed at improving your basic cooking skills and helping you to be confident and efficient around the kitchen. Priced at just £30 each (except for cooking meat which is £40) they’ll make a great Christmas gift for a loved one, we’ll even print you a voucher with a personal message on if you wish. You can find the full details of the workshops in the shop along with online booking, but see our brief outline of the courses below:
Kitchen Essentials One: Knife Skills – Tuesday 22nd January 7-9pm
Don’t know your julienne from your chiffonade or your paring knife from your boning knife? This is the course for you! From the basics of choosing the right knife for the right task, to keeping your knives in tip-top condition, and chopping our way to some delicious dishes along the way!
Kitchen Essentials Two: Stocks and Sauces – Tuesday 29th January, 7-9pm
There are as many sauces in the world as there are chefs, but this Stocks and Sauces workshop will give you an introduction to the building blocks of some of the classics. We’ll explore both Asian and Western sauces and share some delicious treats throughout the evening.
Kitchen Essentials Three: Eggs – Tuesday 12th February, 7-9pm
Eggs are one of natures most simple yet beautiful foods, incredibly versatile but surprisingly difficult to cook right. On this two-hour workshop we’ll whisk, scramble, omelette, poach two ways, turn into delicious sweet tarts and a classic egg-based sauce.
Kitchen Essentials Four: Cooking Vegetables – Tuesday 26th February, 7-9pm
Vegetables are the delicious encapsulation of sunshine. For too many years they have played second fiddle to meat, but no more!! On this fantastic Kitchen Essentials: Cooking Vegetables workshop you’ll learn how to bring out those fantastic flavours locked up inside veg, and put them out front on a pedestal, where they belong.
Kitchen Essentials Five: Flavour Geography – Tuesday 12th March, 7-9pm
Lamb and rosemary, tomato and basil, peas and ham, ginger and spring onion, duck and orange. There’s a reason why some flavour combinations have stood the test of time and are now considered classic. On this educational two hour workshop you’ll learn the origins of some favourite combinations, cook some fantastic dishes from around the world, and gain the confidence to improvise with flavours in your own kitchen.
Kitchen Essentials Six: Beans, Pulses & Grains – Tuesday 19th March, 7-9pm.
So versatile but so often overlooked, this Kitchen Essentials workshop will teach you how to make the best of beans, pulses and grains. Perfect for these austere times, beans and pulses are cheap, nutritious, and if you cook them well, absolutely delicious.
Kitchen Essentials Seven: Cooking Meat – Tuesday 26th March, 7-9pm
Meat is an increasingly precious foodstuff in todays world, it’s becoming even more important to eat less but better meat, and cook well with it, wasting as little as possible. But what to do with it? Roast, braise, griddle, fry, steam, barbecue, or grill? Low and slow or hot and fast? On the bone or off the bone? Our fantastic two-hour Kitchen Essentials: Cooking Meat workshop will answer all of these questions and more.
Yes the rumours are true, the team behind 2011’s storming Popstrami event in Bournville have reunited to bring you the magic of an authentic New York Deli, right here in Stirchley. Check out the details below – dinner on Wednesday, is sorted…
Just a quick blog to tell you about the last forage and cook course that we’re running in 2012. Next Thursday evening 6th September will be our last outing into the wilds of Stirchley to check out what wild plants are around at this time of year and what tasty treats we might be able to cook up using wild ingredients. Also for the first time we’ll be starting and finishing the course at our brand new cookery school on Stirchley High Street which is very nearly finished! You can check out the course details and reserve your place using our new online shop. There’s loads of other courses now advertised in the shop and I’ll tell you all about those in another post very soon.
Check out this great little food magazine for Birmingham that has just been launched. I’ve helped out with this first edition by contributing a couple of articles, but it’s the brainchild of Alex Claridge, the dude behind the excellent Warehouse Cafe. You can pick up a print copy in several cafe’s and shops in the city centre, and the second edition will be out in June. You can also see it embedded below. Enjoy, and if you’re on twitter you can follow Edible Brum at @ediblebrum.
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Sarehole Mill is one of the hidden treasures of Birmingham, if you’ve never visited you should definitely check it out. The fantastic curator Irene along with the city council have managed to secure a significant amount of funding to restore the mill to working order to start selling flour again, and to refurbish the 180 year old coal-fired bread oven on the site to start baking bread. You can read all the details on Councillor Martin Mullaney’s blog – here and here. I took a tour around the site today with Irene, and we chatted about the possibility of baking on-site in the original oven. We’ve identified the possibilities on the site as well as some major hurdles to cross, but hopefully we will be able to help Irene and her team to get the oven back into working order and start baking (and hopefully selling) bread from the mill. Meanwhile here’s a few photos of Sarehole Mill on this gorgeous day…
After our storming pizza night back in January, we’re going all intimate for the next Oh Crumbs… pop up. We’re teaming up with chef Carl Finn and wine expert Matt Beck to present our homage to NYC – an evening of food, wine, cocktails, and music inspired by the big apple. Places are limited, and it’ll all be happening round my gaff in Cotteridge on a Wednesday in April – date tbc very soon.
Check out the menu for the evening below to whet your appetite. Booking info will follow when we have a date confirmed…
After our storming pizza night back in January, we’re going all intimate for the next Oh Crumbs… pop up. We’re teaming up with chef Carl Finn and wine expert Matt Beck to present our homage to NYC – an evening of food, wine, cocktails, and music inspired by the big apple. Places are limited, and it’ll all be happening round my gaff in Cotteridge on a Wednesday in April – date tbc very soon.
Check out the menu for the evening below to whet your appetite. Booking info will follow when we have a date confirmed…
I just wanted to write a quick blog post before I finish for Christmas to let you know our plans for the New Year. If you follow us on Twitter you’ll know by now that we have signed a contract for a lease on a new premises on our local high street in Stirchley, south Birmingham. This is great news as we’ve been operating from Jane’s and my house for 2 years now, and we’re bursting at the seams!
The property (pictured right) has been recently purchased by Everards the brewer, with the purpose of Loaf being their tenant at the building. the new Loaf HQ will be the first premises established as part of Everards’s ‘Project Artisan’ – an innovative scheme to purchase and then lease out buildings suitable for artisan food and drink businesses that need to expand, initiated by Everards after the success of their project to convert pubs for micro-breweries (Project Willam). Everards investment in the property means that Loaf can take on a bigger and more suitable premises than we otherwise could have done and we are very grateful that they came along when they did. We’re currently waiting on planning permission for the conversion of the premises, and there will then be 2 months of building work to complete. This means we are hoping to be in the new place by late March or April.
What will the new place do?
Loaf has been running a community bakery and cookery school for two years now, and the new premises is primarily an expansion of those – there will be a 12-person cookery school on site (visible from the pavement!), as well as a bakery producing a range of real bread for Stirchley and the surrounding area. They’ll also be a retail space, which Loaf is giving to South Birmingham Food Co-operative to run as a joint space. They will be selling our bread in the shop, alongside store cupboard essentials, wholefoods, and eco cleaning products etc – all ethically sourced and fairly priced.
Bread Bonds
Everards are investing in the refurbishment of the property, which is an enormous help, and means we only need to buy the equipment we need and fit it into the property when we’re handed the keys. We need to raise around £25,000 to kit out the bakery and cookery school. In January we will be doing a ‘bread bond’ issue which we hope will raise the majority of that cash. We are looking for people interested in buying ‘loanstock’ – essentially a £1000 loan to Loaf for 3 years. During the 3 years, bread bond holders will get an interest rate on their loan, which instead of being paid in cash will be paid in the equivalent value in bread. At the end of three years, the bread bond holder get’s their £1000 back. If this is something that might interest you and you’d like to be included in the bond issue or would like more details please email me at tom@loafonline.co.uk – I won’t be answering emails until after the new year, but I’m guessing you’ll be pretty busy too, and i’ll be in touch asap after new year.
There’ll be plenty of updates next year as the project progresses, so keep your eyes peeled to the blog or twitter for all the latest. In the meantime, have a wonderful Christmas and New Year, Peace,
Tom.
I just wanted to write a quick blog post before I finish for Christmas to let you know our plans for the New Year. If you follow us on Twitter you’ll know by now that we have signed a contract for a lease on a new premises on our local high street in Stirchley, south Birmingham. This is great news as we’ve been operating from Jane’s and my house for 2 years now, and we’re bursting at the seams!
The property (pictured right) has been recently purchased by Everards the brewer, with the purpose of Loaf being their tenant at the building. the new Loaf HQ will be the first premises established as part of Everards’s ‘Project Artisan’ – an innovative scheme to purchase and then lease out buildings suitable for artisan food and drink businesses that need to expand, initiated by Everards after the success of their project to convert pubs for micro-breweries (Project Willam). Everards investment in the property means that Loaf can take on a bigger and more suitable premises than we otherwise could have done and we are very grateful that they came along when they did. We’re currently waiting on planning permission for the conversion of the premises, and there will then be 2 months of building work to complete. This means we are hoping to be in the new place by late March or April.
What will the new place do?
Loaf has been running a community bakery and cookery school for two years now, and the new premises is primarily an expansion of those – there will be a 12-person cookery school on site (visible from the pavement!), as well as a bakery producing a range of real bread for Stirchley and the surrounding area. They’ll also be a retail space, which Loaf is giving to South Birmingham Food Co-operative to run as a joint space. They will be selling our bread in the shop, alongside store cupboard essentials, wholefoods, and eco cleaning products etc – all ethically sourced and fairly priced.
Bread Bonds
Everards are investing in the refurbishment of the property, which is an enormous help, and means we only need to buy the equipment we need and fit it into the property when we’re handed the keys. We need to raise around £25,000 to kit out the bakery and cookery school. In January we will be doing a ‘bread bond’ issue which we hope will raise the majority of that cash. We are looking for people interested in buying ‘loanstock’ – essentially a £1000 loan to Loaf for 3 years. During the 3 years, bread bond holders will get an interest rate on their loan, which instead of being paid in cash will be paid in the equivalent value in bread. At the end of three years, the bread bond holder get’s their £1000 back. If this is something that might interest you and you’d like to be included in the bond issue or would like more details please email me at tom@loafonline.co.uk – I won’t be answering emails until after the new year, but I’m guessing you’ll be pretty busy too, and i’ll be in touch asap after new year.
There’ll be plenty of updates next year as the project progresses, so keep your eyes peeled to the blog or twitter for all the latest. In the meantime, have a wonderful Christmas and New Year, Peace,
Tom.
No is the short answer. BBC Olive Magazine however, would beg to differ. In November’s edition of the mag, they pitted Birmingham against 6 other destinations (London, Edinburgh, Ramsbottom, Ludlow, Melton Mowbray, and Abergavenny) to find out ‘who’s the foodiest of them all?’. Birmingham came out top with 36 points out of 50 after adding up categories such as restaurant heroes (Balti’s, Glynn Purnell etc), local food (Loaf, Frost and Snow, other social enterprises etc), retail (Rossiters, Capeling, farmers markets etc), claims to fame (Cadbury’s), and the festival factor (Onion Fair, BBC-ahem-good food show, Birmingham Food Fest). Quite how they came up with the short-list I don’t know but I’m sure there are quite a few aggrieved town’s and cities out there (Liverpool, Bristol, Padstow, Cartmel, Oxford, Bray etc). Although I welcome the publicity for my adopted city, and agree with most of the things the article praises, I just can’t agree that Birmingham can possibly be crowned the culinary capital of the UK right now. If the award was for most improved, I think Birmingham would rightly be in the running, it’s seen a huge change in food culture in the eleven years that I’ve been in the city. But really, our food culture is only beginning, it’s a babbling baby in comparison to some of the other destinations mentioned. I actually supplied quite a lot of the information that ended up in the article (see this post), but I never thought in a million years we actually stood a chance of winning.
It’s undoubted that the higher end fine dining scene is now fairly well established in the city, thanks to many many years of hard work on the part of characters like Andreas Antona, Richard Turner, Glynn Purnell, and the ever improving output from the College of Food (UCB). There’s signs of life at the grassroots level too from people like us, Sense City, all the various markets, and other food growing initiatives, co-operatives, home-businesses, and social enterprises that are springing up. There’s also a huge existing swathe of decent cheap food shops and markets in parts of the city, particularly those parts populated by Asian, African, and Afro-Caribbean communities, and we do pretty well at the budget-level in terms of restaurants – you can eat out well for very little cash in chinatown, the balti triangle, and again in parts of the city populated by Asian, African, and Afro-Caribbean communities, and in some places in the city centre too.
The gaping hole in Birmingham’s food culture for me is that there is just not enough in the middle, between budget and high end for both restaurants and retail, to really engage the masses in caring about and eating good food. Really if you want to go somewhere and eat simple, well cooked food, properly seasoned, nicely presented and served with a smile, for around £20 a head, where is there to go? And to get a decent range of quality ingredients if you’re not a particularly high earner, where is there? You either trawl to several shops across several suburbs and take up half a day doing so, or resort understandably, to a supermarket. If only every town centre in Brum could have a ‘Grocer @ Edgbaston‘ – the only shop I can think of that can really say ‘here’ to the above question. So what do we need to do? Well, where to start…
I really believe that the city needs thriving town centre’s that genuinely offer an alternative to supermarket shopping, and where you can get most of what you require within a short walking distance from each other. They clearly work, just go to Soho Rd, Alum Rock Rd, or Stratford Rd and see what a thriving town centre based around food shops looks like. We need high streets in South Birmingham particularly where you can go and get a decent loaf of bread, basics like milk, eggs and proper store-cupboard ingredients, good quality fresh fruit and veg, free range or organic meat, some nice cheese, a decent bottle of wine or some nice beers, and at the end of all that to eat somewhere that cooks good food from fresh ingredients to a decent standard.
We need a council who genuinely strive to create thriving town centres too. All too often, the council is willing to usher in major projects (supermarkets) every few years and call them regeneration, when day-to-day, year-to-year small local shops are not being supported enough. We need business rate breaks for start-ups, shop improvement grants, an easier planning system, strategic plans for town centres, town centre managers, council officers researching grants and possible investors in small retail etc etc. I’m sure Birmingham is not the worst when it comes to this, but it certainly has a lot to improve on, and the council seems little concerned with anything outside of the city centre. Even in the city centre they’re threatening to close down and break up the wholesale markets which will be the biggest tragedy to ever hit this city’s food culture in my opinion.
We need more risk takers too, there are way too many naysayers around and not enough people willing to put their money where their mouth is. From taking a punt on your local shop, to taking a punt and creating your local shop. If you want a market in your neighbourhood, set one up, it really isn’t that difficult. If you want a proper food festival, get organising one. If you want to set up a microbrewery, get a group together and start writing a business plan. If you need a greengrocer, talk to others about setting up a co-operative. If you want a community garden, talk to your neighbours and get your spade out. You get the idea, be the change you want to see and all that.
There are many places to place the blame for the lacking food culture in Birmingham, but we mustn’t sit around waiting for other people to make things happen. There is a long way to go, and much to do, get on it.
There’s a couple of new food-related events coming up in South Birmingham that I thought it worth bringing to your attention. They’re both featured on other blogs so I will just link you up…
First up it’s a special bank holiday Monday farmers market and vintage fair at Rowheath Pavillion (a hidden gem) in Bournville. Check out all the details on bournvillevillage.com
Secondly, this years Birmingham Honey Show has moved venue to Martineau Gardens (even more hidden gem) in Edgbaston. Even if you only go to see the gardens it’s certainly worth the visit, but there’ll be lots of honey on offer too presumably. Details on the Martineau Gardens website.