We’ve just had a fantastic course here this weekend – how to make bread, butter and cheese. The breadmaking part of the course was provided by Katherine Hallewell (above). She and a friend have a small bakery in Stroud, and they make bread for local people. At the moment she’s catering over an open fire for the people working on a new build for Kevin McCloud of Grand Designs. Her husband Adrian (of Wholewoods) is working on that project.

And the cheesemaking part of the course was provided by Judy King of Wharf Farm Dairy. Judy has 10 acres in Gloucestershire, and she has goats and sheep that she milks every day, and a little dairy where she makes her cheeses.

Saturday was cheesemaking (and butter-making) day; and Sunday was breadmaking and eating everything day. I was working in the office over the weekend, but purely coincidentally, I popped in to see what was happening just as Kath was serving ciabatta and crumpets with ricotta and home-made quince jelly. Yum, is all I can say. Curd cheese with celery salt was pretty special too.

Participants on the course made hard and soft cheeses – including curd cheese, ricotta and paneer, and made various types of bread, including sourdough.

I interviewed both Katherine and Judy for factsheets on breadmaking and cheesemaking, which will be added to the website soon.

We’ll definitely be running this course again next year, so look out for it.