Knead to know
With the opening of a second venue, Tapa Bakehouse are fast becoming a flag bearer for organic food in Glasgow. Donald Reid paid a visit
be evidence of our
developing relationship
with good food shouldn‘t be based on the numbers of scallops consumed or local organic fillet steaks purchased. A much more reliable gauge of where we’re heading is our daily bread. After all. most countries with good food cultures eat good bread.
In the words of (‘umbrian bread guru Andrew Whitley: ‘brcad matters too much to be left to the industrial bakers'.
It‘s an attitude that lies at the heart of the business established five years ago by Robert Winters and Virginia Webb in the unlikely setting of a side street in (ilasgow's [fast lind. Native New Xealanders. one of their first motivations to open a place that sold good coffee and good bread was that they'd struggled to find anywhere doing that in the city. Secondly. being outsiders they didn’t arrive with any particular perception of the city‘s established order. ’We looked at the census.~ explains Webb. ‘and could see that Dennistoun had lots of young people and the employment figures were above average. We reckoned that market would always want good food.‘
Winters began attending baking
12 THE LIST ‘8 Sep»? Oct 2008
classes at what‘s now Glasgow Metropolitan (‘ollege He would have struggled to learn about the old-fashioned techniques of baking had it not been for the older members of staff who had learned
their trade before the domination of
industrial plant baking. ‘It‘s about
using basic ingredients and lots of
time to release all the flavours and nutrients in the dough] he explains. 'We‘re a bit ingredients that sound like they have come from a laboratory.‘ They didn‘t set out to be an organic bakery. but soon discovered that the ingredients with the fundamental qualities they were after: flavour. integrity. freshness and goodness. were mostly organic. A year or so after opening the bakery was certified organic. and the majority of the food sold through the two cafes is organic and locally sourced. As far as Webb is concerned. organic is ‘a stake in the ground somewhere. It‘s
‘ORGANIC
IS AS STRONG A STATEMENT AS WE CAN MAKE'
suspicious of
as strong a statement as we can
make about the importance of
producing. preparing and eating good quality food.‘
Winters and Webb sensed an appreciation of their breads. cakes and freshly roasted coffee on the Southside of Glasgow from their fortnightly stall at the farmers‘ market held in Queen‘s Park. so it seemed a good location for their second venue. The new cafe on Pollockshaws Road serves breakfast. branches and lunches of soups. platters and blackboard specials: much of it is vegetarian though unlike the original bakehouse they serve meat and fish here — sourced from Biggar's Blackmount Foods and Taynuilt's lnverawe Smokehouse respectively. ‘11 means we now sell a mean. all- organic. all-local bacon butty.’ enthuses Webb.
Tapa Bakehouse are attending Scotland’s Organic Food Festival (see side panel). Robert Winters will share his secrets of making a great loaf in a free event at l 1.30am on Sunday 21 September at the Ramshorn Theatre.
Tapa Coffeehouse 721 Pollockshaws Road, Glasgow, 0141 423 9494, www.tapabakehouse.com
Now in its third year, the Soil Association Scotland’s Organic Food Festival is displaying the confidence and poise of an event that has proved surprisingly popular and successful in its first two years. In the Old Fruitmarket in Glasgow’s Merchant City it has one of the best indoor venues around for a medium sized food festival - though the clue might be in the name. This year the festival will spread over to the nearby Ramshorn Theatre, where a series of linked cooking demos, tutored tastings, talks and debates will take place, alongside a festival café run by The 78 and stalls selling organic fashion, textiles, skincare and homeware. Highlights include: Scottish Children’s Orchard apple juicing
Bring along a bag of windfall apples from your back garden and see them turned into fresh juice using an old-fashioned manual apple press. Dry Island Shellfish Creel-caught langoustine from a one-man operation based in Gairloch in Wester Ross — the kind of shellfish the Spanish are clamouring for but it‘s fresher here and claims a much smaller carbon claw print.
The Chocolate Tree
One of Scotland’s new generation of young chocolatiers, an East Lothian- based company making organic chocolate bars studded with nuts and berries. which they sell at farmers' markets and festivals. Feeding Scotland debate
Kaye Adams chairs what promises to be a lively debate about food security and the challenges to our eating and shopping habits posed by climate change and rising oil prices. Panelists include former energy minister Brian Wilson and Fife Diet pioneer Mike Small.
I Scotland’s Organic Food Festival takes place 20—27 Sep (Sat 70am- 6pm, Sun 7 0am-5pm). Entry is free. Some individual demo and workshop sessions are ticketed, with ticket prices ranging from £3- £7. Visit wwwsoi/association scot/and. org for full programme details.