A big Hello and Happy New Year to everyone!

I have to apologise for the long silence on our Brasserie Bread blog.  December fried our brains, depleted our energy levels, and cleaned the Bakery out. Our amazing Artisan Bakers, Pastry Chefs, Packers, Cleaners and Drivers worked through the Holiday period, baking and delivering to customers who stayed open with steely resolve, while our lovely Cafe staff got a much-deserved 2 week break. Meanwhile, our Customer Service team popped in and out, weaving around public holidays to tend to the usual administration matters with our wholesale bread customers who stayed open through the Holiday period. We all returned at the start of January in planning mode (a week before the Cafe opened), ready for a slow, steady start to the New Year. What we didn’t expect was a healthy, robust return to an almost December-like atmosphere, with calls rolling in about when the Cafe would be open again, School Holiday Baking enrolments by the minute, Christmas Gift Certificate recipients calling up for Artisan Baking Workshops, wholesale bread customers keen to get a start on trying new products and recipe ideas, people driving up to our doors in droves checking to see if they could get their coffees and daily bread.

We’ve got so many exciting developments in the works for 2010 – When I got back, I had so much renewed inspiration and energy to get stuck into it all. I did research into new story content for the blog, tapping into our extensive BB library, a collection of baking and recipe books amassed over the years by Michael and David (even managed to uncover a copy of Bourdain’s ‘Kitchen Confidential’ for some nighttime reading 🙂 I could spend hours sitting on the floor looking through some of the amazing books on that bookshelf, drinking in the beautiful images of Parisian bread shops shelves lined with crusty croissants and loaves in Gourmet Shops of Paris, or discovering what type of vodka goes with Russian breads in Dan Lepard’s The Handmade Loaf. Going through these books really gives you a whole different sense of where the inspiration behind our loaves and baking processes come from, also shedding light on reasons behind the manner in which Michael and David conduct the Brasserie Bread ‘way of life’ . It also gives me ideas about travelling – tracking Brasserie Bread’s journey back to where it all began. But I digress, here I am getting on the express train to the land of the ‘the tangent’, high hopes and aspirations to be covered when I have time (and perhaps not on the company blog).

Gourmet Shops of Paris, by Pierre Rival & Christian Sarramon. Published by Flammarion, 2004

The Handmade Loaf, by Dan Lepard. Published by Mitchell Beazley, 2004

Attended my first Coffee Mornings for 2010 at Le Pain Quotidien, Surry Hills last Friday, where a mini-brainstorm with the brilliant minds of Kristin Rohan and Gavin Heaton also sparked some inventive ideas around getting the word out about a new online (ad)venture we’re about to dive headfirst into. As with every third person I’ve met in January that has uttered these words ‘I’m not allowed to say what it is yet, but it is very exciting’ – DITTO. But all will be revealed soon 🙂

We’ve also been relatively quiet on our Twitter/Facebook front due to the start of our Summer Holiday School Program 2010.

picking the apples for our new Apple & Honey bread kids recipe

Freshly baked Apple & Honey bread

Matt dishing out the goods

It has been such a pleasure seeing familiar faces return for the baking classes – a few of our favourites have returned albeit having grown a head taller from the last time I’ve seen them, and bringing along cousins or friends with them to bake together. What really gives us satisfaction from the Training School (especially with kids), is when they return eager to learn more. Two of our Training School fans, Eric and Emanuel returned for the classes, along with their cousins. Right before the class, I overheard Eric chatting excitedly at about a 100 miles an hour to his cousin, giving a blow-by-blow account of what they were about to do (So, first you crack an egg into the bowl, and then you start mixing…) and yesterday, Charlie (as quoted by Matt from the ‘Networks Coy on copying Masterchef Format’, Sydney Morning Herald 18 July 2009 article as one of the children from our Winter Holiday Program) asked for some of our yeast to take home and experiment with in his baking, after the class. I’d happily give him a tub if I could, but just for now, he had to make do with a chinese take-away container full. But see, that’s what keeps us going, and that’s what makes our Baking Classes fill up everytime. If just one child could ask me what Charlie asked me yesterday, it’s instant gratification and a spring in my step for that day all in one. (If you’re interested, you can also read our latest published articles on what we’ve been up to lately)

Ok enough gushing about the Training School. Some other exciting projects include working with the intelligent and resourceful Denea Buckingham, or otherwise more widely known as GourmetRabbit to provide some content for her new print and online publication GourmetRabbit (the link follows through to the blog at the moment, the official website of the publication is under construction and due to launch soon). GourmetRabbit focuses on the best of food and wine, and also provides a peephole into the reality of working within all things culinary in Sydney (to start with). A number of respected Australian food personalities are being involved with the project, and we’re feeling pretty honoured to be asked to participate along with them. More information to be published on that soon.

Also, within BB walls – I’m working on a system to incorporate all Brasserie Bread employee internal communications. A big project, I know, but something that the bosses believe has to be done thanks to the rate at which we’ve grown (or more like, exploded, but in a good way 🙂 If anyone has tips, ideas, suggestions (i.e. can anyone tell me how to figure out Yammer?!?! )

On the Cafe and Retail side of things, the Cafe is now open for 2010! Serving up a fresh new Summer menu, I highly recommend the Salami & Provolone sandwich on Schiacciata with Capsicum Jam. Simply LIP-SMACKINGLY DELICIOUS! Although on Tuesday, the cheese people delivered the wrong Provolone (the really AGED smelly but still yummy type), and WHOA, let’s just say everyone who had it in the office had some breath on them! But they got it right yesterday, the beautifully light and melty provolone complements the bite of the spicy Calabrese Salami to a ‘T’. Salivate now.

I’ll leave the bakery news here at the moment – I’ve spent way too much time writing up this post, and there are ideas to be locked into reality, baking classes to be prepped for, calls to be made and salami sandwiches to be had. Until the next post!

Here’s to 2010!

Mei