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Grin and bere it
With her husband Ian, Philippa Porritt runs one of the three Real Bread bakeries we know in Orkney.
Eviedale Bakehouse is the UK's most northerly commercial sourdough bakery, based in the heart of Evie Village on Orkney Mainland (one of the islands of the Orkneys in Scotland), in easy reach of the neolithic sites that the islands are famous for.
We moved to Orkney from Perth nearly eight years ago and like to be termed new islanders. In the past seven years, Eviedale has developed from a microbakery in our café’s kitchen to a standalone sourdough bakery. Ian is a self-taught sourdough baker, having been a time-served luthier and theatre scenery and prop maker. I’m the bakery assistant, marketeer and designer for the business, having previously worked as a stage and display designer, we met working in rep theatre.
We started making sourdough bread in our café, the customers loved it and asked us to make extra for them to buy and take home, so the microbakery was born. Things really took off during the Covid-19 lockdowns, when we developed a wide range of sourdough loaves and tasty sourdough croissants and pastries, especially our delicious cruffins, all selling out each week. We also run a wood-fired sourdough pizzeria so they really went hand in hand.
Ancient grain
Every Sourdough September we make a unique, limited-edition loaf. The most popular one was a bere and beer sourdough, featuring Dark Island, a dark ale from The Orkney Brewery, which is one of our local artisan producers. The star of the show is, of course, the beremeal.
Bere (pronounced bear/bare) is a six-row barley, which may have been grown in Britain since Neolithic times. An earlier name for it was bygg, the Old Norse term for barley. It is probably Britain's oldest cereal in continuous commercial cultivation, and became well-adapted to the far north of Britain. Now it is mainly grown on just 5-15 hectares of land in Orkney but sent all over the world. The team at Barony Mill in Birsay, at the far north of the island, are the main custodians of this ancient grain. They have a 200-year-old working mill and are in charge of growing, milling and selling the beremeal.
Bere is full of nutrients and fibre, though lacks gluten. This makes it very challenging to use for leavened bread, so traditionally it was made into bere bannocks. Originally these would have been unleavened cakes or flatbreads, cooked on a hearth or hotplate. Since around the mid-to-late 19th century, baking soda has been used – which we know falls outside the Campaign’s Real Bread definition! It was also commonly used to make biscuits and crackers, as well as in brewing.
Bere with us
We were determined to use this local grain, although we knew it would be difficult. We have tried over many years to find ways to use bere in our sourdough bread without it inhibiting the rise. We added bere to our sourdough starter but this became sludgy and not very active. After much experimenting, we have found the best way is to make a poolish using a good quantity of active starter, mixing in water and organic white flour with beremeal. We also add a small amount of honey, which gives it a bit of rocket fuel.
We leave this pre-ferment for 12 hours, make bulk ferment dough using organic malthouse flour and leave for 24 hours, before shaping, proving and finally baking. The whole process takes around three days, depending on the weather. Even though our bakery building is fully insulated, proving can be easily affected by external temperatures.
Combined with the malthouse flour, the beremeal makes very tasty bread. We sometimes add in some wholemeal wheat flour and seeds to give us a slightly denser loaf. We sell this bread as both basket-proved and tin loaves, which are enjoyed by our customers.
We have many regular local customers but in order to expand our business further we need to develop products with a longer shelf life so we can export them off the island. We are currently working on a range of sourdough beremeal crackers and so far these are proving very popular. We also freeze our sourdough croissants, which can be re-heated very successfully by people at home. We are hoping to supply these further afield, along with our range of cook at home sourdough pizzas, so watch this space!
Originally published in True Loaf magazine issue 60, October 2024.
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Published Monday 7 October 2024
Real Bread Campaign: The Real Bread Campaign finds and shares ways to make bread better for us, better for our communities and better for the planet. Whether your interest is local food, community-focussed small enterprises, honest labelling, therapeutic baking, or simply tasty toast, everyone is invited to become a Campaign supporter.