Choosing a cake flavour for a mixed crowd
Grandparents, children and a cousin who hates chocolate: how to pick a cake that most of the room will finish.
Why our sourdough is baked only on Saturdays
A loaf that takes three days to make: how our starter, the cold rest and one early morning shape the week.
People often ask why our sourdough loaf appears only on Saturdays when cakes are baked every day. The short answer is time. A 750 g loaf takes about 50 hours from the first feed of the starter to the moment it comes out of the oven, and it needs the kitchen to itself for part of that.
Our starter, which we have kept going since 2020, lives in a glass jar on the cool side of the kitchen. On Wednesday night we feed it flour and water so it is lively by Thursday morning. On Thursday we mix the dough with stone-ground wheat flour from a mill in Pollachi, a little whole wheat and salt, then fold it by hand four times over three hours. Coimbatore’s warmth helps here; in the cooler December weeks the dough takes an extra hour.
On Thursday evening the shaped loaves go into cane baskets and into the fridge, where they rest at 4 degrees for about 36 hours. This slow cold rest is where the flavour comes from, and it is also why the crumb is open and slightly chewy. On Saturday at 5 am the oven goes up to 250 degrees with a tray of water inside for steam, and the loaves bake in two batches of twelve before the first cake goes in.
We make 24 loaves a week, and they are usually spoken for by Friday. If you want one, reserve it by Thursday on WhatsApp. It keeps for four days in a cloth bag and makes very good toast after that.
