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Bread Buy Bike

Neighbourhood Microbakery

Welcome to my website explaining a little bit about a bread baking business I have started in the beautiful Lincolnshire village of Tealby; the place where my family have called home for the past 11 years.

An enjoyable career as an offshore helicopter pilot for the past 18 years ended unexpectedly when the downturn in the industry finally caught up with me earlier this year. Faced with unemployment, my wife, Yvonne, and I had a bit of a think, and decided that the life we had built for our family, in the friendly and picturesque Lincolnshire village of Tealby, was far more important to us than pursuing any career which would inevitably involve moving away from where our young kids and ourselves were happy, and felt at home. After a month or so of various ideas, I found myself regularly coming back to the idea of baking bread for a living. Why not turn a passion I've had over the past decade or so into a home based microbakery? We have had a couple of family camping holidays in France over the past few years, and most days I would walk, or more often cycle, to the local bakery. Sometimes our kids would bike with me, and we'd return to the campsite armed with wonderful, warm, freshly baked breads. We'd then sit in the morning sun, eating warm bread and jam, drinking hot, strong coffee, while Yvonne and I watched the kids stuff themselves with pain au chocolat. I remember watching the bakers prepare the breads as we waited in the morning queue which would snake out of the small bakeries, and thinking what a wonderful job they had. When we returned home this summer from our most recent camping trip, I began to learn - through reading, practicing, and speaking with a lot of bakers who have been extremely generous sharing their experiences - how to turn my interest in bread baking into a small, home based business.

I hope you enjoy the site, and more importantly enjoy the bread.

Andy.

About Myself

Anchor 1

The Microbakery

The bakery is based at our family home, in Cow Lane in Tealby. I will be baking on Fridays, Saturdays and Sundays using our domestic kitchen. I'm not baking from a large professional bakery, so the bread will be in limited supply, with orders being taken on a first come first served basis. If the orders are regularly more than I can produce, then I'll look at ways of increasing the amount I can bake. For the first few months though, I want to make sure I don't try to do too much too soon. More than anything, I want to have fun baking, and produce bread for my family's village that is healthy, nutritious and tasty. I want to be proud of the quality of my bread, and that will mean that as I settle into a baker's life, the amount and choice of bread will gradually increase, step by step, at a pace that ensures a consistent quality. I want to bake and sell bread that's enjoyed and remembered, in the way that I can still happily remember the friendly bakeries we found on our French trips, and their wonderful, tasty, warm breads.

Initially, I will be baking 3 types of bread. There will be medium and large loaves of white, wholemeal and granary bread. As I settle into the routine of baking in larger quantities than I have been used to, I'll gradually introduce cobbs, flavoured breads, seeded breads and sourdoughs - using both rye and wheat starters. My business will then grow slowly and steadily, ensuring that the quality of the bread will remain my priority. I also want my bakery to become part of the village community, so would welcome any comments or feedback on the type of breads people would like to try.

My basic breads only contain flour, water, yeast and salt. The white bread contains 10% sourdough wheat starter in the initial dough mix.

Flour is supplied by Shipton Mill, which is a well established mill in Gloucestershire, offering a range of organic and non-organic flours. They offer a carbon neutral delivery service for their flour and they have a philosophy regarding social and environmental responsibility which I agree with, and am happy to use their products. They have a very interesting and informative website. http://www.shipton-mill.com/

Salt is organic Atlantic Sea Salt, supplied by Geo Organics.

Yeast is supplied by DCL and I am using their range of instant yeast.

I will try to use organic ingredients where I can find a suitable, quality supply, but BreadBuyBike is not an organic certified bakery.

ALLERGY ADVICE : ALL BREAD MADE WITH WHEAT (contains gluten)

OR RYE FLOUR (contains gluten)

ALL BREAD IS BAKED IN OUR FAMILY KITCHEN WHICH MEANS BREAD MAY CONTAIN TRACES OF

NUTS AND OTHER ALLERGENS.

About the breads

Ordering :

orders@breadbuybike.com

01673 838486

Orders can be collected from the village shop or The Vintage Tearooms on Fridays from 9am, or I will deliver to your home in Tealby on Saturday and Sunday mornings by 10am.

To order please email or phone, leaving contact details, your order and address for home delivery, or where you will pick the bread up from on Fridays. If your home has a name, rather than house number, please indicate the number your house would be to help me find your address.

Please place orders at least 24 hours in advance. Due to the limited supply, orders will be based on first come first served. All bread will be baked early morning on the day of delivery, and should be eaten within 48 hours to enjoy it at its best and freshest. The bread can be safely frozen on the day of purchase.

Payment will be cash on delivery to your home at the weekend, or on collection at the shop or tearooms for Friday orders please.

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