14th Nov: C3 Christmas Market http://www.cthree.org/#conferences-content Over 50 stalls at the new C3 Centre on the Sainsbury's roundabout on Coldhams Lane, CB1 3HR
21st Nov: New Road Playgroup Autumn Fair - 2-4pm Community Centre -
We'll be joining lots of exciting stalls for this annual jamboree at the Comm.
28th Nov: Baking Real Bread with Orb class at Swavesey Village College
We're passing on our real bread techniques at this workshop - all our students will be going home with lovely baked bread and hopefully the desire to make more and more and more and......
Orb is keeping a waiting list for upcoming courses - Could be a great Christmas present for someone in your life
Phew!!!
Over the Hill Beer Bread Low G.I. - on the list £2.70 800g; £1.70
Mark has produced another loaf or two of this robust 100% wholemeal loaf. It is really tasty with lots of body.
The bread is made with stoneground, organic Priors wholemeal flour from Fosters windmill at Swaffham Prior and has about 20% of the flour weight replaced with a mix of Pale Malted Barley, Crystal rye Malt, Chocolate Malt, Roasted barley and Rolled oats that are 'spent' [ie.used in the brewing process]. This grain not only adds flavour, but also texture and loads of additional fibre to the bread
Most of our wholemeal and granary breads are pretty good on the Gycemic Index - but this one being 100% wholemeal and including the extra fibre is way up there.
Our neighbour Dave Gilby is the brewer - and he calls his micro brewery (his garage!) Over the Hill - hence the name of this bread. Dave says: There are many reasons the "artisan" home brew scene has "exploded". It is more than just using fresh natural ingredients with no preservatives, and saving money over commercial brews. But the wonderful array of adjuncts and availability of exciting hops means that in small batches we can now brew just about any flavour beer and strength we like. There are no limits. Mainstream beers in my opinion from the big Brewer's have become to bland, insiped, and boring, are factory produced and are uninspiring! Large volume beer sales are in decline whereas the small "micro brewed" beers are on the up with around 1500 breweries now registered in the UK, in the 70's there were only about 200.
As people drink less volume for a number of reasons, inc. health, other social offerings etc, flavour and quality is now becoming more important than quantity and price, imho!
Sounds similar to other products - perhaps bread!!
Allinson's Flour update - Orb moves to reduce this flour in its breads
The saga continues. Mark has at last heard from Allinson's about whether they can guarantee that Glyphosate weedkiller is not present in its milled flour. Well, we've had an email! Whether its enlightening is another matter. The nub of the message in the mail is..
"At Allinson we do extensively monitor the quality of the wheat that we use in order to ensure that it both meets our quality standards and complies with legal requirements. We do monitor the wheat for the presence of pesticides residues in order to ensure that only permissible pesticide residues are present and that they are within acceptable legal limits. We do not have a policy against the presence of pesticide residues that are permissible within the EU." [our underlining]
Mark has asked again the direct question - can they guarantee that glyphosate residues are not present in their flour. But we can see from the message above that they most likely cannot.
Orb has been reducing the amount of Allinsons in its breads - already very small in most of the breads. However some of our breads use mostly Allinsons; the Focaccia and the Milk loaves for example. We will be working to make these breads with increasing amounts of organic, stoneground flour from Fosters Mill in Swaffham Prior - which is the vast majority of the flour we use.
Of course when you see 'organic', 'stoneground' you see costs going up. We are reviewing our prices at the end of 2015 and will take account of the changes in use of flour at that stage.
We know the levels of residue will be very small indeed, however we want to give you, our customers, the best bread possible, and so we will be moving away from the use of this mass produced flour. We hope you agree with this approach and will continue to support Orb. We'd be pleased to hear your views
Rosegate - Squall
Thanks to all of you who braved the weather last Saturday to visit the mini farmer's market at Rosegate farm in Swavesey - and our big thanks to Tom Ashworth of Ashworth Oils who sold our breads for us on such an awful day (we were safely on the train to London for a family do!!)
Over Village Market 12th December
The second Over Village Market is now virtually full with 20 stalls coming in December. We'll let you know next week which stalls are coming.