Swallows Nest community bakehouse

Hi. My passion is bread. I never imagined that the once common knowledge of how to make traditional village breads would become extinct. I have seen remarkable changes in the quality of bread oven my baking life of 55 years.  Bread is cheaper and almost all bread is made in factories using the Chorleywood process, coincidentally invented in the year I was born.

When I first started helping in my grandfather's bakehouse in the UK, aged 6, I was fortunate to work with old bakers who had learnt their craft from bakers before them using ancestral knowledge unchanged for thousands of years. 3 of these bakers, Cliff , Dick and Flute remained my friends until they passed away over 30 years ago. They were happy to see that the knowledge they had handed down to me had not been wasted. 

My grandfather's bakehouse in the 1960s

Now I want to create a place where this knowledge can be preserved and taught to the next generation of traditional bakers.  Bread making knowledge is like a sourdough starter culture, it needs to be fed and watered, and it needs to be shared.

My adobe brick house. The old bakehouse used to be downstairs 

I am English, based near Brighton, but I live most of the time in the Republic of Georgia. I bought an old adobe mud brick house last year and have completed half the renovation. Downstairs there used to be a bakehouse with a traditional Slavic wood fired oven. The village was settled by refugees from Russia 150 years ago, hence the Slavic bread ovens. Fifty years ago most houses would have had an oven, but now in the village there are only a handful left, and none of them are being used. The oven in my house was destroyed many years ago. I have rebuilt the oven , now I need your help to renovate the room  and buy the traditional equipment for an old village bakery.

This is what a Slavic bread oven looks like

The new bakehouse will become a centre of excellence, passing on the valuable knowledge I learnt over 40 years ago.

It is more important now than ever that this baking knowledge is taught to a new generation. Nearby there is a residential home for children with serious learning difficulties . During COVID I taught several residents to make bread, there are more who would benefit from learning to make bread. The  local villagers also want to learn traditions that have been lost. 

They will also earn extra income using the oven to make special seasonal celebration breads. 

The bakehouse will also be open for international students of all skill levels who want to visit.

How you can help. 

I need to raise £5000 to completely renovate the room and buy equipment. The money raised will also pay for free bread making  workshops for locals. 

This is what the old bakehouse looked like when I bought the house. It had been used as a cowshed for 30 years

This is the oven I have just built.

A £1 gift will purchase 1 brick, you can donate as many as you choose

Pledge £25  and you will receive a very special Slavic sourdough starter culture that has been nurtured by my neighbour for 3 generations. It had been carefully air dried. Once it is hydrated and leavened it will add a  complexity of taste and a connection to a culture nearly vanished.

Pledge £50 and you will get a half hour Zoom call with me to ask any  bread baking, pizza making  or oven building questions.

Pledge £100 and you will get a one hour zoom call. 

Pledge £500 and you will be invited for a 3 day village bread making workshop when the bake house is completed.