Good afternoon everyone, As many coffee shops will tell you, it's not easy finding a small scale, reliable, local dairy producer. When you find one, you hold on for dear life. At the bakery, we are fortunate to have found Berkeley Farm. The Gosling family are based in Wroughton, Wiltshire, and have been producing Guernsey milk for over a hundred years, now organically. They also supply us with incredible double cream, yoghurt, and more butter than you'd care to know about. In celebration of this exceptional dairy, and in anticipation of a visit from top pastry chef and published author, Anna Higham, we will be making the cult rice pudding recipe from Anna's book, The Last Bite. Said pudding will come...
Good afternoon everyone, Don't worry, this email is not going to detail Hugo's previous career as an actor. Rather, we wanted to talk about an aspect of the hospitality industry which we really value, a different kind of stage. A couple of emails back Kate mentioned her month spent at a bakery in North Carolina. This kind of unpaid, informal work experience, or staging, is common amongst professional bakers and chefs as a way of gaining inspiration, learning new skills and exchanging ideas. In the early days, Kate would combine visiting family in Stockholm with spending time at the city's best bakeries. These times heavily influenced the style of bread she wanted to make and led to the development of the Stockholm loaf back in...
Good afternoon everyone, Today, a Hamblin exclusive. Many of you may have seen the strikingly beautiful ears of heritage corn hanging from the lights in the bakery window. Corn of this kind is not commonly grown in the U.K. and these ears are in fact the result of 8 years of work by the usual suspect, Mr John Letts. On a mission to grow a multi-purpose corn suitable for fine and coarse milling as well as distilling, John collected samples from gene banks, from Japan to Canada to Peru. Once grown, he painstakingly selected kernels for two properties; those which fell into the category of 'flint corn', which is hard and slightly translucent and also ripened early, crucial for thriving in...
Good afternoon everyone, We'll keep this one short and very sweet. Ice cream sandwich season is upon us, with the forecast looking glorious for next weekend. So get ready for the best-sourced cookie dough ice cream of your life, made with organic Guernsey cream, Cacklebean eggs and pieces of our classic choc chip, sandwiched between a rye & Pump Street chocolate brownie. Just something to mull over... For those looking for something a little lighter, the first of the strawberries came in yesterday and they are already tasting wonderful, so we'll have punnets galore coming in on Saturday. Lastly, following requests we've started stocking 1 litre bottles of the incredible organic whole milk we use from Berkeley Farm dairy in Wroughton, so...
Good afternoon everyone, As much as we adore brown in all its hues on the counter - the mahogany of the Stockholm, the fawn of a cinnamon bun, the burnished gold of a sausage roll - with the changing weather comes the option of injecting some real colour via seasonal fruit. The first of the apricots have arrived from our Sicilian supplier, La Sovrana, still slightly tart but perfect for poaching and topping our almond financiers. You'll find these online. We'll also be experimenting with a rhubarb bakewell tart next weekend, made with beautiful stalks from Elder Stubbs, plus there's rumours swirling of rhubarb swiss roll returning. English strawberries are due any day now, the excitement palpable. As outdoor asparagus reaches it's peak...
