Philip is delighted to offer individual and small-group workshops at Temperance Cottage or at YOUR venue from March 2023. £45 per person, up to 5 persons There is a 3 hour minimum commitment. All consumable materials are included, just bring yourself and a basket to take … Continue reading Breadmaking Workshops, Temperance Cottage: June 2023
SUBJECT TO CURRENT Welsh Assembly regulations regarding Covid-19 and Coronavirus, I will be delighted to offer individual and small-group workshops at Temperance Cottage, hopefully sometime from June 2023. £45 per person.
There is a 3 hour minimum commitment. All consumable materials are included, just bring yourself and a basket to take away your freshly baked loaf. Message me to book a date. Both weekdays and weekends are available. Alternatively, I can come to your venue. Feel free to contact me for travel fees and arrangements.
Bread workshops are also ideal for children’s groups as ‘activity’ and ‘experiences’; as party, birthday or seasonal gifts, including Christmas. Gift cards are available for posting.
Certificate experiences are also available for CPD for teachers & trainers.
BOOK IT, Make a date from June 2023, to get started!
My mobile: 07952 347810, landline/answerphone on 01639 831000 or email on:
Temperance Cottage is approximately 20miles/ 32km to the North of Swansea, just on the edge of the Brecon Beacons National Park. Get in touch for specific directions.
ALLERGENS/Allergies: Please be aware that all food prep WORKSHOPS at Temperance Cottage are subject to common food allergens . Nuts and associated allergens, though not dairy, will be present in varying degrees during the workshop process.
ARCHIVAL INFORMATION ONLY: Skewen Memorial Hall, SA10 6DP. A 10.30am start for a 3hr workshop making your own simple white loaf by hand. £15, all ingredients supplied within the price. All of the necessary equipment including a protective apron will be available on the day. The whole process demystified in one short session for a lifetime of enjoyable baking! PLEASE bring your own basket/paper parchment to take home your hot loaf!
A brilliant time teaching new friends at a private workshop. A very tight deadline to prepare bread as a wedding gift at the nearby Cafe Chameleon in Ystradgynlais.
Practice run for the eager students, getting the first loaf out to test for weight and sound, then cooling the loaf. This one a 70/30 white flour to wholemeal.
Bank Holiday Sunday, 26th of May 2019 saw the first of the Skewen Produce Fayre events at the Skewen Memorial Hall, Wern Road, Skewen, Neath SA10 6DP. Simultaneously the first of my ‘drop-in’ Simple Breadmaking Workshops too. Excellent kitchen facilities and a very responsive oven made for some first class results.
I cannot wait to get back next month (30th June 2019) for the next session. You’re welcome to join us for a high-energy practical session; expect to spend around 3 hours from start to finish. An absolute steal at £10 per session, if you can bring your own ingredients, a tea-towel and an apron:
1kg. strong white flour
Fresh yeast from the supermarket (ask behind the bakery nicely!)
Sea salt, preferably flaked
…Or you can use my ingredients for an extra £2.
You’ll get a comprehensive free instructions handout to take away with you and should you wish, an option to buy pretty much any of the utensils that you use! Price list will be published on the day.
Getting my space and materials ready for Summer bread workshops. A recent trial run with real people volunteering their enthusiasm for a full day was a great help. Two adults and two children who seemed very appreciative of the space, the process and the practical, demonstrative approach. A very hands on, visual, textural and energetic day. A small amount of theory and some pre-prepared examples to begin and a baked loaf out of the oven to cool at the end. Given that the living room space can be cleared quite easily as it has no permanent furniture pieces or at least all that can be moved, I’m expanding into this room to accommodate up to six people for a single or two-day workshop. My starter/introductory fee will be £25 per person for the day with a materials fee of £5. Own lunch can be brought or a ‘nibbles’ buffet of Vegan produce can be supplied for a further £4, that includes my power-salad Foragers’ Lunch. A range of leaves freshly cut from the raised beds and garden outside.
Students will be encouraged to scavenge for their own ‘fresh-yeast’ supply at their local supermarket (any that have their own bakery, which includes local branches of Asda, Tesco or Sainsbury’s) Everyone will have their own all-important marble ‘worktop saver’ work station including associated mixing bowls, small kilner jar, scraper/dough cutter and cotton apron. A de-construcable central work-table will accommodate the student with their marble slabs. The work process will be supported with a range of colourful, serviceable aprons, the hand rinsing warm-water bowl and hand towels. With each workshop there will be a pre-prepared overnight ferment to demonstrate the visual impact and importance of the Autolyse process. When at a travelling workshop either a computer/screen slideshow or paper-portfolio version of this can be presented. As the workshops develop, with results and outcomes, these will be included in the slide show and accompanying book/pamphlet/electronic publication. A calendar of set dates and times will be published online but with an open invitation to request other dates and venues as desired.
Check out further images for the Bread_Workshop on Pinterest by clicking here!
Saturday evening, the 4th of May, 2019, getting my baking groove on with the Autolyse process. The simple combining of the two principal ingredients, the flour and the water for a long rest, uninterrupted by machinations or any other alchemical interference. Approaches differ from practitioner to practitioner. I have chosen to put in crumbled fresh yeast (obtained from the very generous and obliging Tesco bakery. To date, this continues to be free-of-charge) and a little sea salt at the initial combining phase for the big rest. Some say a minimum of 20 minutes. For maximum impact and an almost visceral exhilaration that is a little more HG Wells, I go for a more generous 8 to 12 hours as I love the anticipation on waking up, to see what living creature has evolved in the bowl. An early attempt saw a truly science fiction visitation, with the dough expanding up and out of the 3 litre mixing bowl, lifting the lid clean off by around 12cms, seemingly generating its own consciousness. It had by conservative estimates quadrupled in volume toward a class of sentient being with its own well defined and engaging personality. Reminiscent of Woody Allen’s character Miles Monroe trying to tame the overflowing concoction that he mixes up in his 1973 classic ‘Sleeper’, set 400 years in the future.
This morning, Sunday the 5th of May 2019, the dough, yeast, salt and water have worked their magic and have not disappointed. The first set of gentle foldings begin, to encourage that long term lithe, aerated structure that I’m seeking in the final bake.
Nearly the last of 2018’s small-tin loaves. Crust finished with a dusting of finely milled tapioca flour from ‘Clare’s’ of Grangetown, Cardiff. A two day refrigerated ferment with some obsessive slow and gentle folding in the process. A couple of spoonfuls of home-cultured sourdough starter and a smidgen of fresh yeast with the cheapest plain flour I could find from the supermarket. I’m trying a half hour rise in a barely warmed oven, then applying a full and immediate ramp-up to full power for some oven-spring on the front end of the bake. Fifteen minutes in, then putting the ramp into descent for the finish. Out it comes then onto the rack for cooling.
BACK TO THE KITCHEN to bake a slow, whole unrefined loaf. Including as many raw lifestyle ingredients, those primary elements of sustainable creativity as might season to taste. Frugality, hands-on. Temperance Cottage Garden, an eighth-of-an-acre curtilage to the house is ideally suited to the growing of a vegetable and herb plot with an assortment of fruit trees and edible shrubs. Much in the form of an allotment, complete with pre-existing block-built potting-shed, the Welsh pipe-smokers’ muse retreat. This I’m repurposing variously as a Smith’s forge, external bread-oven, composting and potting area with an adjacent wood store, Welsh stick chair poised and purposed in readiness for pondering the great indoors. My internal ‘mood-board’ for the shed is taking inspiration currently from the inventive vision of ‘the Bothy Project‘ that has been underway in Scotland for a while now. This being in terms of design convention, use of materials and economy as well as the notional ‘creative hermitage’; the poet’s retreat and its spiritual association with landscape. Coupled with the desire for a ‘down-sized’ lifestyle, solitary-living amongst an imagined or real wilderness, this is an attempt at harmonising with the outdoor elements, then harnessing them for sustenance and nourishment, literally and metaphorically.
Baking indoors meanwhile, I’m continuing to absorb and naturalise the Richard Bertinet ‘stretch and fold’ method for the creation of a malleable, utilitarian ‘simple white dough’. I had bought his book with the accompanying DVD from Waterstones in Cardiff a number of years back: ‘Dough: Simple Contemporary Bread‘. This was at a moment in time prior to the blooming of the YouTube streaming revolution. Bertinet’s is a physically satisfying, stress-relieving French artisan method. I am slowly adapting my own kitchen, its furniture and working layout to accommodate a more efficient, focused practice. In due course, I am aiming to fully exclude refined or ready-made pre-processed foods; ones commercially loaded with preservatives, additives and modifiers. I am conscious that concoctions and confections not only taint, misguide and confuse the palate, but are toxic and alien to our inner bacteriological composition. Subconsciously, this has the far reaching and convoluted outcome ultimately of restricting our ambition and vision of what can be possible. As science-fiction as it might sound, our internal chemical, neurological and CNS make-up is as much the nourishing, self regulating micro-community as a sourdough starter in the attic. We are, all of us, a living breathing subcultural colony, predominantly of non-human identity, carbon in constituency, metaphysically conscious and actively communicating.
Where kitchen-storage is concerned it seems that there is no such thing as ‘too many Kilner jars’. A personal flour collection is becoming a whole new preoccupation with a growing awareness, not just of creating new blends for different cooking outcomes but types for assisting the physical processes. Strong White Flour, 00-grade flour for pizza, Corn-flour, maize, rice, squeaky tapioca and semolina flour for the lubrication of the bread peel; the finesse and refinement for the slide delivery of loaf to oven with hand-skills. I’ve been using a small oblong of marble as my weighty, inert work surface. Even so, the ‘stretch’ part of the process was having a tendency to ‘walk’ the entire marble block toward me and nearly off the table with the all-up weight of 1kg of hydrated flour in the dough. To counteract this, I’ve created a carpenters’ ‘S’ hook block, identical to the mechanics, If not the scale of that used on the wood-workers’ bench. In essence, a flat wooden work surface held in place on the table with a ‘downward lip’ at the far end, to prevent wood block movement and an ‘upward lip’ and the near end, to prevent the marble slab from edging forward. So far so good. I’ve only used a small mix since installation, but am looking forward to the full weight commitment next time around. I’m wanting to concentrate on Baguettes, with increased rest and fold periods (3 at 45minute intervals) to develop a more fulsome taste. I need too, to reinstate my sourdough method and the use of a living breathing ‘biga’ to kickstart a flavour ‘hit’. As the crumb and crust improve with the experience that only repetition can foster, the actual ‘taste’ of the bread has been a little on the bland side, though I’ve noted that the inclusion of Sesame seed, linseed and other cracked or rolled ‘inclusions’ do have a pleasant and very positive diversionary effect.
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The first week of August and some successive days of potatoes from the raised beds. Two ‘early cropper’ varieties and both Scottish in origin. Casablanca and Arran Pilot. The Pilot giving a more elongated form. In the kitchen, the preparation is cleaning but never peeling, nor at this size cutting, then to a rolling boil followed by a gentle simmer for fifteen to twenty minutes. The resulting produce at plating-up is perfection. Next year I shall try another variety, perhaps a larger sort. These have been lovely, like a slightly oversized salad potato. Excellent for dinner presentation and with great substance, mouth-feel and flavour. Over the coming days I will need to excavate and sift through all of the planting areas. There will almost certainly be hidden gems.
temperance cottage 