Pretty hollow

I took part in my first fayre/market and I am still exhausted. It was fun but I have a newfound respect for street foodies everywhere.  

Just to fill you in I took part in the Jersey Gardens Summer Fayre, which is a cute annual event near Osterley Park. 

I teamed up with my cousin Little Miss Shortcake to run a foodie stand. She baked and sold her awesome selection of cakes and treats, while I did, well you know what I do; bake a ton of bread.


It took a full two weeks or so of deciding, prepping and executing the whole production. I had to decide how many different breads I wanted to produce, how many breads I should bake in each selection, the prices, the branding. It was like starting up my own little business, and in reality that's what I did. 

The biggest hurdle, the name, thankfully was already solved. The next issue was how to present that. My sister is actually quite a talented graphic designer, but don't tell her that. She spent days coming up with hundreds of different logos and branding choices. I think I chose just the right one. What do you think? 

With all the 'business' decisions out of the way, so far, I needed to finalise the bread selection. I went with some personal favourites; rosemary and potato bread, rosemary focaccia, Spanish pan rustico, ciabatta, Jarlsberg twist and a cherry tomato and mozzarella bread. 

They all sound like winners, well to me they did, but once they were on the stall everyone would be singing for their own supper. 

To keep things as fresh as possible I created each dough during the day and baked them as late as possible on Saturday night. 

The day started at 6am where I went out to get the ingredients I needed. Here's a tip, don't go to a 24 hour Asda. OK so it may be unfair to tar each Asda with the same brush but how can a self-proclaimed superstore run out of flour? 

Thankfully a smaller store had exactly what I needed. Why Asda you ask? They were selling 3KG of Allinson flour for £2! That's a steal, without going to jail. 

Where would I be without my Kenwood Chef? It's the thing I started with when I began to seriously bake and it was a workhorse all day Saturday. It's not flash, it doesn't come in pretty colours, but it is a solid piece of work. 

The day was fairly warm and so the rise on each dough was lovely. Everything came up nice and fluffy. Here's a tip, use a square/rectangular tub when making ciabatta. I've used bowls and other containers but the rectangular shape is a must. Oh and another tip... Rest your ciabatta on the tray you're going to bake it on. 

While the ciabattas rose beautifully on their proves, once I transferred them to my pizza stone, each loaf lost at least half its rise. It was a real shame.

While we're going with tips maybe I should give you one more. The exact time I was baking my Spanish pan rustico I was also watching Munster's first match of the Pro12 season. Don't watch rugby, or indeed any sport while your baking. I almost lost a whole batch.

While normally it would be annoying to suffer such a loss, losing a batch of pan rustico would have put me beyond despair. 

Every dough for the fayre was a joy to make bar the pan rustico. It was a total pig. It took almost an hour to bring the dough together. That sounds a bit extreme but the thing just would come together. 

Slowly but surely I added a bit of wholemeal flour and a bit of white flour, and kept mixing. Bit by bit I hoped it would come together until finally it did. So losing a batch of that would have been horrid. 

On the morning of the fayre I decided to bake the cherry tomato and mozzarella bread. I had the dough ready from the day before so the taste was a little bit more yeasty, but that added to the flavour. The obvious reason to bake it on the morning of the fayre was to keep it that much more fresher. 

Who could resist cherry tomato and mozzarella bread straight from the oven? It look that much effort to stop myself from having it for breakfast.  

The morning of the fayre was quite dicey. It was a dull start to the day but we got to setting up in the dry. All looked well until it started to pour down. I was wondering if that would be that. All that baking, all that effort to be ruined by rain.

The only people who came by were kids who had their own charity/scout stalls and wanted to eat as many free tasters as they could. 

My cousin kept up a brisk trade with her cakes but the bread was slow going. I didn't quite appreciate just how many people stock up on Hovis.

The rain did eventually break and we had a good few hours of partially sunny weather. In that time the locals ventured out and we were mobbed. 

My cousin's cakes drew them in and they filtered on to me to have something more savoury. It was the perfect partnership. 

I put on the hard sell and from the initial doom of the morning I almost sold out. 

The cherry tomato and mozzarella bread went in a flash. Everyone was hankering for some bready lunch. 

The focaccia too was another popular buy. What broke my heart though was there was little to no interest in my rosemary and potato bread or the pan rustico. 

Everyone was intrigued by the Jarlsberg twist. Not only were they unsure about Jarlsberg but they were also shocked Norwegians baked. If only they knew. I can still taste the buttery sugary beautifulness that was the baked good I gorged on in Oslo.

I managed to convince a few customers to give the rosemary and potato bread a go and hopefully they didn't regret it, but not one single person wanted to try the pan rustico. It's such a lovely loaf to have. It's not flash, it's not fancy, but it is good hearty bread. 

The loaves I had made were distributed to friends and family and they all loved it. So people of Isleworth I hope you feel like you missed out. 

The fayre was set to close at 5pm but a heavy bout of showers put paid to that. People began to escape the rain, and by 4pm we were abandoned. We waited for the rain to subside before we began to pack up shop.

I want to thank everyone who came down to support us. Especially my two friends @yeppi_yeebo and @JPW84 who both made very long journeys down to West London to taste some fantastic bread. Thanks guys

It was a fun day, or should I say a couple of days, and I enjoyed myself. I'll be off on holiday soon but I will certainly be doing another market with Little Miss Shortcake. If you have a market you'd like to see us, you can let me know in the comments below or tweet me @desi_baker_boy.