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British Bread Adventures Pt 2
Part 2
Hearing of our bread interests, our waiter one evening suggested breakfast at Sally Lunn’s. Sally Lunn baked for the local abbey in Bath from her home which is now the oldest residence in town.
The old kitchen in the basement is now a wonderful mini museum.
The buns are made from an dough enriched with butter and milk, so they’re a kind of brioche I suppose. Denyce had the lemon curd and I the cinnamon butter.
The wooden trough in the museum is where the dough ingredients were mixed, kneaded and left to mature. When the dough was ready, large lumps were cut out, placed on top of the trough and divided into loaf shapes. These were put on proofing boards, covered with sacking and allowed to rest again for about an hour before baking.
Generations of bakers used the original bread oven (the black box to the right of the open oven). It was heated with bundles of spindly branches about 5 feet long, called faggots, that were placed in the back and sides of the oven. They burned well and generated a lot of heat which was stored in the stone of the oven.
See Bread Adventures, Pt 1.
See Bread Adventures, Pt 3.
See Bread Adventures, Pt 4.
British Bread Adventures Pt 2