Date: 17/04/14
Location: Shelton
Interviewer: Hilary Hughes
Permission given to use interview for website, exhibition and Staffordshire archive: YES
Question asked “What do you remember about bread or bread baking”.
My fathers Jamaican and he was a baker, a Jamaican baker, so that might be interesting how different cultures have a different spin on how they make their bread. So we used to see Jamaican Buns being made in our house in the 70's and obviously it was as a child I had a fond memory of the way the dishcloth was rising, obviously it was the yeast. So yes, I've seen a lot of breads and stuff being baked. I can go forward, I was actually privileged when I went to Goldsmiths University in the 80's to actually work for an Italian bakery. They were high end bakers, they used to do the bread for the Houses of Parliament. So those, Dorchester, Houses of Parliament, I remember driving the van, the security pass to get in, that was ........(sounds like T'chinos) bakery, in Bermondsey, they were Italian. I went to study at Goldsmiths and my uncle got me a part time job, 4.30 in the morning, horrendous, lugging two tons of flour upstairs, one of the jobs you do in the formative years. The bread was amazing, superb.
Hard dough, a dough with stronger texture. Like now it's Easter, so bread, now the famous bread from the Caribbean bakeries at this particular time would be known as a 'duck bread'. Very creative, there's a little duck on the end of the bread, not the full thing, a little head. That bread flies off the shelves. And twist breads, the bread is plaited, just gorgeous those are the breads consumed in quantities round about now. Main ports of call for this bread in the UK, Birmingham, London obviously, Wolverhampton, maybe Bristol, where the stronger communities are.