In the kitchen
Why the sourdough takes three days
People ask why we only have bread some days. The honest answer is that it takes three days and Mill Street has one oven.
The starter gets fed on Wednesday morning. It is not romantic. It lives in an ice cream tub with a rubber band around it, and it has been alive since the second week we were open, which makes it older than two of our tables.
Day one is waiting
Nothing visible happens on Wednesday. The flour and water sit together and the flour stops being flour. If you rush this part you get bread that tastes like bread and nothing else, which is fine, but it is not what we are trying to make.
Thursday the dough is mixed and folded four times, roughly every forty minutes, in between everything else. It is shaped in the evening and goes cold overnight.
Day three is the only part you see
Friday it goes in at half past four. Twenty minutes covered, twenty minutes open, and then it has to cool for an hour before anyone is allowed to cut it.
Harbour Road has two ovens and can do this most days. Mill Street cannot, and Kettle Lane has no room to try. Same recipe, three different answers, which is most of what running three shops turns out to mean.
Next
What we actually mean by locally roasted
Every cafe in the country says locally roasted. Here is the specific, boring version of what ours means.