New Round of Kitchen Essentials Dates

We’ve recently added a new round of dates for our series of Kitchen Essentials courses, between July and September 2013, so if you’ve been looking for a cookery course with Loaf, there might be one in there just for you.

Kitchen Essentials

Kitchen Essentials is a series of short evening workshops, designed to quickly improve your cooking skills in particular areas and make you a better, faster, and more efficient home cook. The series is broken down into bite-size chunks that you can dip in and out of depending on what areas of cooking you’d like to learn or improve on.

July – September 2013 dates are as follows (spaces available – first come first served)

  • Knife Skills: Tuesday 23rd July
  • Stocks and Sauces: Tuesday 30th July
  • Cooking Vegetables: Tuesday 6th August
  • Herbs & Spices: Tuesday 13th August
  • Beans, Pulses & Grains: Tuesday 10th September
  • Cooking Meat: Tuesday 11th June, Tuesday 17th September

Like all our courses at Loaf Cookery School, Kitchen Essentials workshops are very hands-on, and we guarantee you won’t leave hungry, but you will leave with a host of new skills to get perfecting at home. All workshops are led by chef and baker Dom Clarke, run on a week day evening from 7-9pm, and are priced at £30 per person (except ‘Cooking Meat’ which is £40).

For more information about each course visit: www.loafonline.co.uk/shop/kitchen-essentials/

Earth oven Building Course – 15 & 16 June

Sunny weather this weekend certainly brought the whiff of BBQs and outdoor cooked food in the air. For us this means firing up our wood fired oven in the garden and inviting friends and family round for a relaxing evening. Whilst we often make wood fired pizzas, and enjoy a glass of wine in the garden, we’ve been know to prepare a slow cooked roast too, plus sweet treats as the heat of the oven cools down, and even leave a meringue cooking overnight, ready for the next day.

If the idea of cooking in your own garden takes your fancy, our next weekend Earth Oven Building course is coming up on Saturday 15 and Sunday 16th June in Stirchley at the home of our baker Dom.

As well as choosing suitable materials, you’ll learn how to build the oven floor, and construct and shape  the thick oven walls using cob,  cut a door and decorate the outside. You’ll also learn how to cook in and maintain your oven. Top notch grub will be provided for lunch and snacks on both days as well as drinks throughout the day.

For more information visit the Loaf Cookery School pages on our website.

Earth Oven Course

 

Earth oven Building Course – 15 & 16 June

Sunny weather this weekend certainly brought the whiff of BBQs and outdoor cooked food in the air. For us this means firing up our wood fired oven in the garden and inviting friends and family round for a relaxing evening. Whilst we often make wood fired pizzas, and enjoy a glass of wine in the garden, we’ve been know to prepare a slow cooked roast too, plus sweet treats as the heat of the oven cools down, and even leave a meringue cooking overnight, ready for the next day.

If the idea of cooking in your own garden takes your fancy, our next weekend Earth Oven Building course is coming up on Saturday 15 and Sunday 16th June in Stirchley at the home of our baker Dom.

As well as choosing suitable materials, you’ll learn how to build the oven floor, and construct and shape  the thick oven walls using cob,  cut a door and decorate the outside. You’ll also learn how to cook in and maintain your oven. Top notch grub will be provided for lunch and snacks on both days as well as drinks throughout the day.

For more information visit the Loaf Cookery School pages on our website.

Earth Oven Course

 

Perfect Poultry

Now it’s getting colder, perfect your poultry skills in time for the Sunday roast season!

There are a few spaces available on our Perfect Poultry butchery course on the Thursday 1st November, 6.30pm-9.30pm. Have a butchers (sorry – I couldn’t resist) at the course description below to find out what’s in store. This course is also effectively a meal out with a difference, so it would be great for a couple of friends coming together.

This course brings you an exciting collaboration between Loaf Cookery School and local master butcher Steve Rossiter, who runs Birmingham’s only certified organic butchers in Bournville.

Starting the evening with a whole chicken, Steve teaches us how to respectfully bone it out, and demonstrates the versatility of the different joints, whilst Loaf director Tom Baker will lead you in creating some wonderful chicken dishes. We sit down to feast on the fruits of our labour and enjoy a nice glass of wine towards the end of the evening, so save plenty of room!

We’ll be making:

  • chorizo-stuffed chicken breast wrapped in streaky bacon
  • spatchcocked poussin with lemon and garlic
  • Raz al Hanout tagine chicken
  • chicken liver salad

and learning the simple secrets to the perfect chicken stock.

This is a very hands-on course and you’ll be practicing your new found skills in: jointing, spatchcocking, and butterflying your own chicken and poussin.

You’ll feel right at home at Loaf, and everything you learn will set you up for impressing your friends and family with your new found skills at home. The course costs £60 (inclusive of VAT) and all refreshments, equipment, recipes and aprons are provided, but please bring a food container to take home raw leftovers and bones for stock.

Book your place on the Perfect Poultry course through our online shop.

The course takes place on 1st November, from 6.30pm-9.30pm at Loaf HQ in Stirchley, South Birmingham.

Our First Earth Oven Building Course

This weekend Loaf ran it’s first course in earth oven building. Despite the inclement weather we upped gazebo’s in a Sutton Coldfield back garden, and the group of eight students with the talented Lizzy Bean as tutor, got to work constructing the beautiful oven pictured below. On Saturday we looked at finding the appropriate mud, before laying down some sand and the oven floor on the already-constructed plinth. We then built a sand dome to act as a template, mixed the first lot of cob, and put on the first layer of the oven. On the Sunday we mixed more cob, put on the second layer, plus a third cosmetic ‘clay plaster’ layer, and finished it off with some nice decorative tiles and by cutting the doorway. We enjoyed fantastic food and beer courtesy of our wonderful hosts all weekend. If you’re interested in coming on a future earth oven building weekend then check out the full description of the course here, and  email tom@loafonline.co.uk to register your interest. If there is enough demand we will try and put a course on the second weekend in September 2011, if not it will be Spring 2012. Tom.

New Course: Earth Oven Building Weekend

Just a brief post to notify you of a brand new course that we’re offering this summer which we’ve just advertised on our cookery school pages. Our Earth Oven Building Weekend will take place on the 16th and 17th July, and is a unique opportunity for you to come and learn how to make an earth oven for outdoor cooking and bread making in your own back garden. We’ll be making an oven together over the weekend in the very same style of the oven that we use to run our bread courses and community bakery from. You can see all the details of the course over on this page, and if there is enough demand for the first course we may run a second course this year before the weather turns.