I had a great and tasty time talking with Irina from Little Brick Pantry. Irina is a home baker who works out of her kitchen in Cookham, baking up beautiful and delicious breads and pastries. I interviewed her for my radio show, On The Job with River Radio. Below are some of the photos I took when I went to get some on the job training as a baker and part of our interview. If you want to hear the whole interview, you can use the "Listen Again" function on the River Radio website.
Andrea: So tell me about yourself. Who, who are you and what is little brick pantry?
Irina: I'm a home baker and Little Brick Pantry started a couple of years ago when I left my office job in London and I decided that I definitely want to give it a go. I applied to go to Reading college, to do patisserie course, and I've had absolute fantastic year. it was fun. It was 12 of us in the professional kitchen learning how the basics for the patisserie and making everything from scratch, making different desserts. and after that I started taking slowly orders from my home kitchen.
Andrea: Yeah. Yeah. Because when you say you're a home kitchen, it's not like you're just cooking for you at home. Right. You know, other people who order from you really don't you.
Irina: So mainly it's going to local markets and showing what I make. It's a bit different but also I absolutely enjoy making the making like Victorian sponge. Yeah. Any cakes, celebration cakes, but with me, it's all about the flavour. So my when I decorate celebration cakes is mainly with fruit or it's just the cake. It's all about the taste and that's what you get with me.
Andrea: And so what are some of the different things that you bake for different people?
Irina: Well recently one of my main passions is this braided brioche loaf. It's actually very Scandinavian Baltic mix. And so how it all started the idea of this me making, baking them here in UK, in England. Is that my boyfriend and all his family visited Estonia for the first time. And my mum being...
Andrea: Let's just clarify your Estonian as well.
Irina: I am Estonian. And so my mum made one of the savoury braided loaves, the cheesy one and just one vanilla one. So all the family tried it. And they looked at me and they said, "We've known you for the last five years. Why did you never made that? This is absolutely delicious!"
So when I start running ideas by my family, what I can make. This was definitely the number one that you should try and people should try it and see what it is because it looks quite amazing.
Irina took me into her kitchen and had me help her make one of her braided herb and cheese wreaths. They do look amazing, with several steps in the process to get there. Irina makes it look easy, but she was a great teacher and walked me through part of the process.
After we braided the wreath together and left it prove, I asked Irina more about where she sells her products and how people can find her if they want to purchase any.
Andrea: If people want to have some of your tasty on my, or our really let's face it, our tasted braided wreath, where can they find you?
Irina: I'm based in Cookham and I bake from my home kitchen. You can place your order by emailing me email, you can find on my website Little Brick Pantry, (www.littlebrickpantry.co.uk) or twice a month, I'm at the Holyport market at the Memorial War Hall or Cookham at the Metre Markt. You can find me there with my bakes. If you would like to discuss, or anything you are particularly you interested in, you can come and find me there. Otherwise get in touch via my email address on my website
Andrea: Do you have any recipes in the planning?
Irina: I'm working on a couple of recipes because fruit is in season and a lighter dessert. So a couple of new things will be coming out for sure. So one of them is full of strawberries.
Andrea: Well being in Cookham we have the Copas Pick Your Own
Irina: That's exactly. So that's another one on my agenda is to go pick your own and make a couple of cakes before fresh strawberries.
Andrea: I can't wait!
I was able to taste the wreath after it baked and it was AMAZING! Seriously, I wanted to only have a small slice, but I ended up eating at least a quarter of it in a sitting. I can definitely recommend it!
Thanks again Irina for talking to me with On the Job!
You can listen to our whole interview by going on the River Radio website: https://river.radio/on-the-job and finding the date of the show, 2021-06-22. If you are an Apple podcast user, you can listen directly here: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/on-the-job-aired-on-2021-06-22/id1573131577?i=1000526396553
If you have a business in the Thames Valley area, from Reading through Ascot area roughly and want to be a guess on On The Job, please get in touch with me at andrea@aplusphotography.co.uk.