Freshly baked bread made the traditional way is back once more in The Old Bakery and though we say so ourselves it tastes damn good!

With so much to do each day I have been reluctant to make bread as well. However that doesn't mean that I didn't want to make it regularly at some point in the future. Well that time has arrived and I am now producing all of our own bread needs from scratch in our ovens.

One of the things that I wanted to achieve was bread hand made using quality local ingredients.I also really enjoy the whole process of bread making, something that I was trained to do nearly 30 years ago. I still get a buzz when I open the oven to see the finished product.

I go and get my flour directly from the watermill that grinds it at Leatheringset near Holt. I make a  white loaf and a Granary loaf. My favourite of the two is the granary which I have elected to make using just granary flour and not to mix it with white flour as is the trend nowadays. This means it is slightly more dense but the flavour is far more superior in that it is really malty to the taste.


I have to say one of the real pleasures of this job is having the ability to go and get many of our ingredients directly from the people that produce them. This involves a drive around the beautiful back lanes of North Norfolk touring the countryside seeking out the best that Norfolk can offer.


KIPPERS
I'll leave the house on a sunny morning and head straight up to our nearest coastal village, Cley. The 'ey' is pronounced as in 'eye' and calling it Clay is an instant way to spot a foreigner round these parts.

In Cley there is a small family run Smokery called Cley Smokehouse but it does a great range of smoked product including old traditionals like Bloaters, Bucklings and Red Herrings through to Prawns, Cod Roes, Gravlax and a Hot smoked Barbary Duck breast. This is the first of our local food heroes and my regular order here is several pairs of their un-dyed kippers cold smoked over oak.

We do smoke some food (both hot & cold smoked) at The Old Bakery, our favourite being our Hot Smoked Salmon, also over Oak sawdust. However I would not dream to be able to match the Cley Kippers. I have them most days and as part of a diet they have helped me lose just over two stone! I plan to write a book on this diet called "How to get Chipper, Fitter and Ripper with a KIPPER".

They are really good value as well. AND you can buy most of their stuff on line! So even the 'townies' can get some.




 From Cley I drive back inland to a small village just outside of Holt where I buy my.....



FLOUR

This I purchase from the watermill that actually grinds it at a place called Letheringsett. Whilst the existing building was built in 1802, after a fire, there is a record of a watermill here in the Doomsday book. Once again we are blessed not only with a working mill but one that produces a wide range of flours and is especially well known for it's Spelt flour.

I buy my Whole Grain flour and my Strong White Bread flour from here and have just started buying their Muesli after an extensive period of research (Alison had a bowl and liked it!).

It is a real 'no frills' mill. To qualify that comment a bit I would say that it is a huge building originally with the ability to have four mill stones grinding at once but despite that grandeur the carpark is simply it's working yard and the tours are pretty low key as is the shop itself.

The other day when I arrived as I walked towards the mill's entrance I had to wait just outside the door as a mother duck and her ducklings came waddling out of the dark mill to enjoy the days sunshine. Very rural.









Back into the car and a short drive to the town of Holt for our......


GREAT SNORING QUAIL EGGS

They, the eggs, do not snore. Nor do the Quails from which they oose, and they certainly do not snore greatly. The Great Snoring Quail Eggs are named so because 'Great Snoring' is the name of the village where Top Farm is based which produces the eggs.

That clarified I have to say that I don't actually buy these from the farm but from the department store in the town of Holt. It is just as easy and they have only traveled about 9 miles to get there.
We use the Great Snoring Quail eggs to create The Old Bakery's 'signature' dish which is an English muffin with a Portobello mushroom on top filled with a tomato & basil brushetta which has 3 soft boiled Great Snoring quail eggs nestling within. Yes it is quite yummy but really tricky to get the eggs just on the cusp of runniness.

CROISSANTS

The department store is called Baker's and Larners and if ever you visit Holt you must make a point of exploring the store. Whilst there I buy their frozen pastry croissants which we bake-off every morning for the guests.


MRS' TEMPLES BINHAM BLUE CHEESE

The last item that I routinely buy here is Binham Blue cheese. A semi-soft creamy blue veined cheese full of flavour and a highly respected cheese in this area, vastly out selling other blue cheeses.
It is made in a village called Wighton by an actual Mrs Temple. The milk comes from her herd of Brown Swiss cattle.

We use this in our menu as a choice with scrambled egg on our home made toasted bread . It is my favourite breakfast from all that we serve.


Now I can start moving towards home again, so back into the car and a little like a scene fom Postman Pat you'll see me driving down some more narrow Norfolk lanes as I head to Grange Farm to buy our.......


YOGURTS & ICE CREAMS

From the outsiders eyes Grange farm in the middle of a collection of fields might look like the Grundy's old place in the Archers but that would be so unfair. It is very much a working farm and has the muck splashed around the yard to prove its credentials as such.

I've turned up and seen a dozen or so rabbits 'hanging' from a couple of broom handles which have been balanced horizontally over the backs of a couple of kitchen dining chairs just inside the almighty old flint barn.
The place is old and showing signs of being a little tired but in a couple of the out buildings sits a manufacturing dairy as pristine as any that you will find on any anonymous industrial estate.

Their yogurts are fantastic made with milk from their own herd of cows of course. We only buy the full fat yogurts as our philosophy is that you are probably only staying with us for a few nights so the pleasure gained from two or three full fat yoghurts outbalances any guilt caused.

The Ice creams are used on our evening meal menu and are just as bad for you.... Thank God!


I possess a chiller in my car that plugs into the car's power outlet because as you can see the 'round' is quite an extensive one which I only do once a week or perhaps a week and a half. Having said a long goodbye to their farm dog I head up the track and back into the lanes to the village of Melton Constable where we buy........


SAUSAGES

We took sometime when we first moved here to seek out the best supplier of each of the ingredients that we used and Rutlands Butchers were,and still are, the best sausage producer in the area (in our opinion). With a range of over 40 sausages all made on the premises we are spoilt for choice. However to give our breakfasts a slightly unusual but extremely tasty sausage we generally buy either their Smokey Joe's or Honey Glazed Gammon sausages.

We also buy our Haggis from them as they produce an excellent product which is on our evening meal menu. Delia Smith serves them in her Norwich restaurant on Burn's Night and they also export them to Scotland! All our guests really rate the Haggis and this is one of my favourite evening meals.

It is a real family butchers with Mum, Dad and their four adult siblings who equally give the best service in the country. If I had known about them in the past I would have arranged field trips from my Supermarkets for staff to learn what excellent service really is!





 I may make a slight detour here to Briston the neighbouring village if we have guests who are having an evening meal and have chosen....



CROMER CRAB

These are the sweetest of crabs and we buy them direct from the fishermen who have caught them early that morning (depending on tides). The company is called Norfolk-C-Larder and are another of our local food heroes that have great 'green' credentials.


We also sometimes treat ourselves to one of their lobsters to bung on the BBQ as they are the cheapest when bought straight from the fisherman!



I'm on the home run now, just two miles to home but with one more stop on the edge of our village where I buy the.....


EGGS

Talk about free range, you can see the chickens right across the road in the meadow. Martin's Farm is one of four farms which have the Farmhouses right in the village itself. The eggs are extremely fresh and we tend to buy a little but often so that the yokes are a deep bright yellow.

We buy them from a small...   very small shed where they also have a fridge/freezer with rare breed sausages, chickens, and bacon in plus fresh milk. On other shelves in the shed you can buy seasonal vegetables, it is a very busy little shed.

Martin's Farm has supplied Galton Blackiston with ducks for the BBC 2 TV show The Great British Menu and the family has been farming here for four generations (over 60 years!).

Every year we treat ourselves to a Christmas goose from them as we know that their animal welfare is top notch and that all their food is grown on the farm itself. In fact I probably saw our goose many times as I drove past the field until late October when the field became eerily vacant.


Back into the car, turn right and there we are right back at The Old Bakery just in time for lunch, after I've put all the shopping away of course.




Well that is most of the suppliers but there are a few more that I have to visit in the opposite direction and those I do on Thursdays. For Thursdays are market day in Fakenham and so I tie them in with that. First port of call is the James Beck auction where I may or may not find myself a bargain.

Then I will visit the market buying any.....



FRESH FRUIT & VEG.

I buy any fresh fruit or veg that I think is outstanding in quality. Normally the Pink Grapefruit are far larger here than the Supermarket, as are the Cauliflowers and Tomatoes, cheaper too.


Then I'll drive to Morrisons Supermarket where I will get all the usual basics. Yes I still have to shop at a supermarket.

From there I will drive to my last supplier for our....


BACON & BLACK PUDDING

At a small village called Great Ryburgh (You'll find that many of the smallest villages in Norfolk are normally prefixed with the word 'GREAT'), there is a brilliant Pork Butchers called Perfick Pork.

The guy that set it up came from West London and lived there back in the 60's & 70's when I was living there and he too came to Norfolk in the last 10 years. As I said we sought out the best ingredients for our breakfasts and on tastings his home produced, cured and smoked bacon was, and is, second to none.

We buy the Oak Smoked bacon.

 I love turning up when the smokery door had just been opened, that smoked bacon smell takes me right back to the late 70's when I worked on a supermarkets delicatessen. Every morning I would open the back up chiller to set the days counter up and be hit by that beautiful aroma of smoked bacon that had been building up through the night. For me it is one of those smells that I will never ever forget, very nostalgic and still hits a chord in my heart every single time.
 

Their sausages are excellent too but the sheer choice of flavours that Rutlands produce gives them the edge on that ingredient, whilst Rutlands cannot match the pure quality of Perfick Pork's bacon.

Perfick Pork are another supplier that sell their product online to any where in the country packing it in special containers packed with dry ice on a next day courier delivery.



So that is it, my tour of Norfolk's best producers of fine foods. Yes I could get it all in the Supermarket, Sainsburys 'Taste the Difference' or Morrisons 'The Best' ranges. Sure I could even get it delivered from one of those little shoe box vans that scoot around from house to house.

BUT there is nothing more honest than looking a true artisan in the eye as you buy a top class product at a fair price. Knowing that he or she has an unrivaled passion for what they produce and that as a result WE are keeping THEM in business.

Whilst at the same time their excellent food is giving us our reputation which in turn is keeping US in business!

THANK YOU TO ALL OF OUR LOCAL FOOD HEROES.

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