Hi Karen. Tell me about you and your family

I live in Cookham and have done so for 11 years. I'm married to Simon
and we have two children, Zac, 10, and Pippa, seven going on 17. I love
the Cookhams. I never take for granted how lucky we are to live in such
a beautiful part of the world.

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Tell me about your new business, the Cookham Bakehouse

Cookham Bakehouse was established in the spring of this year. I bake
sourdough bread. The Cookham Wild is my white loaf and is made with only three ingredients – flour (organic untreated white flour from Shipton Mill in Gloucestershire), water (Cookham’s finest) and sea salt. No preservatives, improvers or nasty additives. The natural yeasts present in the organic flour work to provide a natural leaven (which makes the bread rise) with no need for commercial yeast.

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How do you make your sourdough?

It takes at least a day to make sourdough. First, the sourdough “starter” or “mother” needs to be refreshed using flour and water. It bubbles away and after five or six hours, is added to more flour and water (and later salt) and is mixed through. The dough is then allowed to ferment for two hours, after which the process of stretching and folding begins. This replaces the more conventional kneading of non-sourdoughs. After two hours, the dough can then be divided, weighed, shaped and put to bed in cane bannetons overnight (in the fridge) for a long slow prove. In the morning, I bake the loaves in my Rofco B40 oven, which I love. It is a three-tier stone oven, takes two hours to come to temperature and bakes bread beautifully without the need for added steam. I can bake nine loaves at a time and have been baking up to 27 loaves each session.

 

How did you get into this?

I baked my first loaf of bread around the time Zac was born. It was a Nigel Slater recipe and I felt such an amazing sense of achievement at the end result – which was pretty terrible as I remember there were pools of unincorporated flour – but I still loved it. I had the bug. A few years later, I went on an E5 Bakehouse sourdough bread-making class, which was great fun, very informative and took my baking to the next level. From there I grew my own sourdough culture and baked regularly for family and friends. It was compulsive! 

   I am a member of the Real Bread Campaign and they run a “Sourdough September” event every year. Inspired by that idea, I baked a number of loaves every week during September of last year (using my ordinary oven as this was pre-bakehouse), to raise money for Macmillan. I raised over £800 thanks to the generosity of friends and family. In the process, I realised that there was a genuine interest in sourdough bread locally and a frustration at not being able to buy good stuff in the supermarkets. Not long afterwards, Cookham Bakehouse was born.

 

What did you do before?

Before I had children, I was a reinsurance lawyer working for a firm in the City. It was a fantastic job, very interesting and challenging, but long hours, and required a great deal of commitment. For all those reasons, it was not well suited to having children (and living outside London) and I didn't return after having Zac. Like many mums, I was always thinking about what I might do locally that fitted in with school hours. Over a period of years, I have arrived at my own Bakehouse and am very happy. 

 

How can we get our hands on your bread?

I sell my bread to friends and family and through two retail outlets: The Old Butchers Wine Cellar on Cookham High Street and at Stubbings Nursery and Cafe . OBWC have some beautiful cheeses that pair perfectly with sourdough. I know Ange and Paul Stratford very well and it was very kind of them to support the Bakehouse in its early days. Stubbings use my bread in some of their menu items as well as selling it on the counter and are an enthusiastic supporter also, for which I am grateful.

 

What do you love about what you do?

I find what I do tremendously satisfying – from growing and nurturing my own sourdough starter, making and shaping the dough, baking it off in my stone oven and watching the transformation from dough to crusty tasty chewy loaf – it is the magic of nature and is addictive. Even more satisfying is the eating of it and passing on the rest to others to eat and enjoy.

 

What's next for the Cookham Bakehouse?

Future goals include expanding my range of breads and introducing others to the joys of bread making!

 

Visit https://www.facebook.com/cookhambakehouse/ 

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