The science and magic of baking led Elisabeth Mahoney away from grief and into a new life and successful business
There was always bread,” says Elisabeth Mahoney. “When I was young, my mum was a night nurse in Hither Green Hospital, and she would come home in the morning, bake some bread in our teensy kitchen, then sleep while I went to school. She taught me how to make my first soda bread when I was eight.”
Mahoney and I are chatting as she teaches me how to make my first bread: not soda bread, but a nice white loaf, plus a seeded spelt and a plaited challah. Creator and founder of One Mile Bakery, she is whizzing me through her breadmaking course in the space of a few hours. One Mile, which Mahoney started in 2012, has two elements: first, it delivers, by bicycle, homemade bread, soups and preserves to any customer living within a mile of her Cardiff kitchen. (“It’s a bigger radius than I realised,” says Mahoney. “And we live on a big hill: the cycling nearly killed me at first!”) And second, it provides day courses for anyone who wants to bake good bread: whether experienced, or, like me, a complete novice.
Related: Lessons in loaves from a local baker | Meet the producer
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