Month: March 2012

Hi Real bread fans! 

I am bouncing back from two weeks of rubbish, into sunshine, health and the prospect of a lot of chocolate coming my way.  To celebrate all things spring and of course, Easter, I have developed a REAL hot cross bun.  Bet you’ve never had a real one, have you?  They are REAL as they have no unnatural ingredients and are left to mature before baking in the old, traditional way  – no commercial yeast used!

I am selling these for 50p each, although there is a minimum order of 4 buns.  Minimum weight for each bun is 90g (industrial buns are more like 70g or less).

Yes, I realise you can get 4 for 78p in Asda, but I don’t compete with Asda.  The nearest equivalent I found was a single bun in  Waitrose from their in-store bakery.  Here is the list of their ingredients:

Wheat flour, mixed dried fruit (31%) (currants, sultanas, mixed peel), water yeast, sugar, rapeseed oil, pasteurised free range egg, invert sugar syrup, palm oil, emulsifiers mono- and diglycerides of fatty acids and mono- and diacetyl tartaric acid esters of mono- and diglycerides of fatty acids, lemon juice, raising agents disodium diphosphate and potassium hydrogen carbonate, mixed spices, maize glucose syrup, flour treatment agent ascorbic acid, salt, pasteurised free range egg white, palm fat, milk proteins, maize starch, flavouring, Mixed peel contains wheat glucose-fructose syrup, orange peel, invert sugar syrup, lemon peel, citric acid.


Here is a list of my ingredients:
Organic flour, milk, butter, currants, water, sugar, free range egg, mixed spices, salt, vegetable oil.

WAITROSE BUN is 89p.
JO’S LOAVES BUN is 50p.

To be fair, I do sympathise with Waitrose that even with that impressively long list of additives, they still have to add FLAVOURING to their buns. Shame.

NEXT BAKE DAYS – PLEASE can I have your orders 48 hours in advance:

Saturday 31st March – Collection 9.15 to 10.30
Tuesday, 3rd April – Collection 9.30 to 11.45
Saturday 7th April – Collection 9.15 to 10.30

If I get a run of orders on Hot Cross Buns, I might prep some on Thursday 5th and bake for Good Friday.  Afterall, that’s the traditional way.

Hoorah, I am finally getting rid of this dreadful chicken pox and I am preparing to bake again THIS Saturday. No surprises, that soon after I started to recover at the beginning of this week, my son was taken ill. Happy to say that I think he too is over worst, and I might possibly send him to nursery tomorrow. There is a limit to how many times a baker can take cutting and sticking and watching epsiode after episode of Andy’s Wild Adventures.


 Interesting to read the news today about people wasting bread, it seems that we don’t value bread in this country any longer; it as become so cheap that we are willing to buy more of the stuff so that we don’t run out, even though it means chucking away slices that we don’t use. I have had two customers purchasing 2 loaves a week from me(on different days) but then whom cancelled one of the loaves loaves owing to the fact that they were still enjoying the previous one. Although it means I sell less, it makes me happy to know that my bread is being used to within an inch of it’s life. My sour-dough naturally has a longer shelf life and in the case of rye, the flavour will also improve with age. 


 For those of you who have ordered for Saturday, Just a reminder that my price rises will kick in this weekend. Check out my loaf menu for latest prices. 


 Next bake days: 
Saturday, 17th March
Tuesday, 20th March
Thursday, 22nd March (Hullaballoo) Etc, etc!

Growing up as a schoolchild in the seventies with red hair could be challenging. My mum always used to say, “you’ve got to learn to fight your own battles”.  A harsh lesson I thought, as bullying is a difficult one to overcome.  But look at me now, standing on my own two feet, with my own little business with the support of my lovely family and friends. For the last four days I have been fighting another horrible battle, which couldn’t have come at a worse time for me.  Chicken pox is a pretty awful disease in it’s own right and if unlucky enough to catch it in adulthood, it is 10 times worse.  (No I am not making it up, check it out on the internet!)  Thankfully today, I had my mum with me who has prevented me from going into mental decline of continued isolation and my mother-in-law keeping my son entertained at hers for the day.  I am so grateful to them both and also to my friend who stepped in to look after my boy yesterday, despite having 3 kids of her own.  
I have had lots of SMS well-wishers, calls and also emails from complete strangers empathising with my situation.
So at precisely this moment in time, I was supposed to be at a proper bakery, mixing up some 55 kilos of dough, in preparation for a big bake-off in their bread oven at some unsociable hour of Friday morning.  As I reported last time, I was supposed to be representing myself at the Kings Walden Farmers Market at 11am on Friday [ok, ok, you don’t have to plug it anymore… inner monologue].  I am devastated that I can no longer fulfil that obligation, owing to the growing number of blisters breaking out in every area of my body.  According to my research, I could still be manufacturing these little blighters well into Saturday, so I am not yet sure when I will resume ‘normal’ baking.  New information will be posted up here and on my Jo’s Loaves FaceBook page as and when I am creating nice little crusts of my own… (sorry, couldn’t resist!)
I was going to put some pictures up that my mum and I took today, but you’ll be pleased to know, I thought better of it.  Not a pretty sight, but we had fun doing it.

Next Bake Day: TBC