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Crazy Friday

Cathryn Watters
Jul 1, 2016
3 min read

Friday's are always busy but today is more crazy than usual. We have our first real challenge this weekend as we have two events to support tomorrow !!

1) St John's Special School, Kempston - Summer fete 11am til 2pm

2) Wixams Summer Fayre at Lakeview Village Hall, Wixams, Bedford, 12noon til 7pm

For a large commercial bakery this wouldn't seem much of a big deal but for us it poses some exciting challenges.

- The bakery is based at home so balance with family life and demands of our 4 children have to be managed. They have parties to go to, play dates to enjoy, they need to be fed ( note the issue raised on the previous blog ! ) and at some point we all have to sleep.

- The bread will be made fresh so we can't do a great deal of prep of the loaves before hand and will have to start baking in the late hours of Friday night / early hours of Saturday morning. We don't employ anyone else - that's why it works - but we have to be realistic about what we can manage ourselves too.

- We also have regular customers who are important to us and are the basis of the business so we have to ensure they are still catered for. The honesty box still needs to be filled for those customers who just want to drop by for example

- Cookies, pasties, scones and brownies can be prepped earlier which is great but how many to make - nothing worse than running out.

It's an exciting challenge as we haven't had to bake on this scale before and it takes us to the next level helping us put various things in place to cope with large scale baking. Here's how our day has looked so far and seems to be heading;

4am - ovens on and baking begins
7am delivery to local family - cakes, sandwiches and pasties to take into work - audit day made sweeter!
7.30 deliveries to local farm shops with supplies, stock up honesty box
8am school runs - divide and conquer, Andrew goes to Cranfield with Alice and I take Lottie to the lower school here in Wootton.
10am delivery to 2 local schools for their staff room
11am time to top up the honesty box ( where's it all gone!! ) Pop to village shop with supplies of breads, cookies and pasties. Check KHB on Facebook - answer bakery queries
12noon Andrew gets a couple of hours sleep to recharge whilst Cathryn attempts to clean up the carnage from food prep, last night's tea and children's breakfast ( yeh they got fed! ) and put wade through the mountain of washing that has accumulated throughout the week.
2pm back at it - baking and prep starts for tomorrow and final orders finished off for today. Washing pile seems to be growing rather than reducing in size - what ???
6pm - 11pm: Grown up fun time with friends!!!
11pm - children are on sleep overs, Andrew and Cathryn will be getting down to a HUGE baking session for the fetes tomorrow - we really know how to party when the kids are away ... !!!
1am - estimated time to crash out in bed for Cathryn whilst Andrew hits the Red Bull and soldiers on.