Good afternoon everyone,
As we approach the final week of January, it feels like the 2026 is well and truly underway, with Semla Bun season is upon us. We like to keep these traditional; a cardamom-spiked enriched dough, which once baked is sliced open across the top, the middle crumbs scooped out and blended with our homemade almond paste. This heavenly mix is then placed back into the hollow bun, topped with lightly whipped vanilla cream, and the bun lid replaced. Not the most straightforward item to eat whilst strolling down Iffley Road, but we celebrate risk-takers and optimists. And will provide napkins on request. Look out also for a new cake from head of pastry, Valentina, an almond sponge topped with Amalfi lemon curd and whipped cream, as well as Banbury cakes, and the possibility of baguettes hitting the bread shelves at some point after a low-key but very tasty trial run over the weekend just gone.
Now for the main event. Katerina Lygaki has been with us for nearly a year and has become an indispensable and treasured member of our Covered Market team, possessing great skill, style and a killer sense of humour. Ever since learning of Kat's "day job" as a literary agent, we have been hoping she might contribute some words for the newsletter, and now she has...
Musings from the Covered Market Part I: Our Plain Jane
There’s an oddly satisfying feeling in rooting for the underdog. Call it cultural conditioning or a hero complex, but as people, we tend to feel good about ourselves when we side with the thing which others tend to discount. This is how I’ve felt all week about our Grasmere-style gingerbread. Placed next to our delicate financiers and elegant thumbprint cookies, I’ve felt a close and oddly parasocial connection to it. To me, our gingerbread is the girl in the romcom before she takes off her glasses and the romantic lead finally notices her. She is the ugly duckling before she turns into a swan. Unlike these examples that have their protagonist subscribe to conventional beauty standards in order to be seen and accepted, our gingerbread stands in the face of conformity and prejudice. Don’t get me wrong, it’s not as if all the stunning buns and pretty desserts don’t deserve for someone to sing their praises. They are delicious, and I’ve scoffed down one too many thumbprint cookies this week not to admit it. The difference is not in taste or quality. It’s in our perception. Pretty desserts have thousands of years worth of social capital on their side, they don’t need my help. It’s the ugly ducklings of the bunch, the marginalised group on our counter, that need an advocate.
We’ve somehow equated outward beauty with morality – not to get too biblical, but we see this trend from the very beginning of humanity, when great orators started to share stories round the fire, well before written culture began, from epics where heroes defeat deformed monsters (I’m looking at you Homer, Beowulf, even the Bible) to Shakespeare’s depiction of disabled kings to Disney’s obsession with pretty princesses and their ageing, evil stepmothers to our contemporary fixation with ‘good-looking’ serial killers (hello Zac Efron as Ted Bundy). So prevalent is this rhetoric in our understanding of the world that we let it shape our realities. I’m here to be the change I want to see in this world and declare once and for all that beauty does not equal superiority (moral or otherwise). Pretty people can do bad things; just as conventionally unattractive deserts can be deceptively delicious. The gingerbread, like us, contains a rich inner world full of surprising multitudes if you just give her a chance.
Katerina Lygaki
Here's to surprising multitudes, wherever you may find them. Thank you for reading and enjoy the rest of your week,
Kate and Hugo