This week we say hello to yet another one of our lovely bakers, Jenny. Pop over to our instagram to catch up with Jenny throughout the week!
We are also excited to continue our charity bake this week after successfully delivering our first donations to the Leeds City Council emergency food packages hub last week! We also launched our fundraiser ‘Loaves For Leeds’ and have been overwhelmed by all the kindness, support and generosity from our community. After hitting our initial target of £800 in less than six hours, we extended our target to £2000 which we just achieved this morning!!! We are going to be leaving the fundraiser to run for the time being as any contributions over the target will be allow us to continue providing loaves for Leeds and supporting local charities and organisations for as long as we are able to. You can read all about the fundraiser here, please do share or contribute, if you are able: https://www.crowdfunder.co.uk/loaves-for-leeds
“I think I’m officially still the newest member of the Leeds Bread Co-op Baking Team after coming on board at the back end of last year. Although you never stop learning when it comes to bread, and particularly sourdough bread, I am very much still a baker in training. Like a lot of our bakers my route here was a little unorthodox. I spent 10 years working on sustainable and ethical food sourcing before too many hours looking at a computer screen and my frustration at the unsustainability of mainstream food system made me quit and look for alternatives.
My love of bread has existed for as long as I remember, but I only started baking myself when a number of circumstances collided…I started dating a French person (they love bread), I developed a food intolerance that meant supermarket bread was a no-go, and I met a bread baker for some research and she gave me a sourdough starter. The starter was actually for a friend who’d asked me a week before assuming I’d have one (apparently, I look like a person that keeps a starter). This got me started (pun alert), then I got a little bit obsessed, then I decided it was a valid next career step, as you do. I was already following Leeds Bread Co-op…because, well, they are a co-op and they make great bread. So, when the job was advertised, I gave it a punt.
So here I am on furlough, and I can’t wait to get back to bakery and see the other bakers and co-op team again. In the meantime I’m trying to keep myself busy; this has generally consisted of home baking (surprising I know), some partially successful food experiments, watching youtube videos on building a pizza oven, volunteering at Meanwood Valley Urban Farm, having lovely chats with neighbours and my new hobby of making garden furniture items from scrap wood. Expect pictures of rough wooden furniture coming your way…”