Viva Brighton Issue #58 December 2017
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WE TRY...<br />
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Nordic baking<br />
Self-improvement, with buns<br />
I discovered the most delicious fact recently. There<br />
are sourdough hotels at Swedish airports. There<br />
the nation’s precious sourdough starters are fed and<br />
nursed by suitably artisanal fermentation aficionados,<br />
lest the bubbling brew be arrested in their<br />
owner’s absence. This I found out one November<br />
evening at the Nordic Baking workshop at Stoneham<br />
Bakehouse: a thoroughly enjoyable two-and-ahalf<br />
hours spent with its founder, Simon Cobb, and<br />
four other budding bakers.<br />
The evening starts with preparing the dough for<br />
rye bread: a simple matter of mixing stoneground<br />
white and wholegrain rye flour with yeast, salt<br />
and warm water until it’s a lot like claggy, wet<br />
cement. This, we are assured, is as it should be.<br />
The dough is left to prove under a showercap for<br />
a while before we roughly shape it with wet hands<br />
and smooth it into 1lb tins. It proves a little longer<br />
before being slid into the huge oven.<br />
Next we start on a batch of cinnamon buns. This<br />
dough requires the rubbing in of butter, and the<br />
addition of an egg, a healthy dose of ground cardamom<br />
and some sugar and, once kneaded and left to<br />
prove (more showercaps), we get to the cinnamon<br />
bit, forking together butter, brown sugar and cinnamon<br />
in gratifying quantities. The wafting spices<br />
induce a sensory, seasonal reverie.<br />
It’s all set to one side and the table is cleared for<br />
a tasty Scandinavian supper of rye bread topped<br />
with beetroot, apple, fennel and horseradish, and a<br />
sweet and earthy parsnip and apple soup. As we eat,<br />
Simon tells us how he got into baking on doctor’s<br />
orders. Advised to learn something new to assist<br />
with his recovery from a breakdown, he took a<br />
breadmaking course at the Community Kitchen in<br />
Lewes and, after stints baking at various locations,<br />
set up the community bakehouse on Stoneham<br />
Road. Now these Tuesday workshops help to fund<br />
those that he offers on a Wednesday, to people with<br />
their own mental health challenges, the elderly<br />
and the isolated. Then he opens the bakery on the<br />
weekend to supply Poets Corner with delicious<br />
bread, buns and seasonal treats. It’s a wonderfully<br />
virtuous circle.<br />
Supper finished, we roll out our proved, spiced<br />
dough, applying generous amounts of the cinnamon<br />
butter before folding and rolling again. Then<br />
dough is divided, twisted and knotted into individual<br />
buns that receive an egg wash and a scattering<br />
of sugar nibs before being swallowed up by the<br />
industrial oven.<br />
Soon the rye loaves are ready and Simon taps them<br />
out. They’re risen, with satisfyingly cracked tops,<br />
and are soon followed by the buns, whose sugary<br />
innards have spread onto the parchment. They’ve<br />
not even begun to cool before I’m planning my<br />
next visit – maybe for the olive oil breads or the hot<br />
cross buns workshop – and wondering if it would<br />
be very greedy to eat all eight buns myself… LL<br />
Bread making for beginners: 4 hours, £50. Nordic<br />
Baking, etc: 21/2 hours, £25. Vouchers are available.<br />
2 Stoneham Road, stonehambakehouse.org.uk<br />
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