New Beginnings

Barmbrack (or brack) is the bread I grew up with.  It's a bread I know. Often called a 'tea cake', it's actually a tea laden fruit bread which softened the pang of many a hungry stomach. 

Everyone has a tale of how they came to bread and this is mine. 

When I first ventured into the food industry, I was naiive and unfamiliar with what I now term as the dark side of cooking. At 30, I thought age was unimportant and abandoning my Clayton's career in the jungle I called a law firm (with an HR manager I wanted to roll down a very steep hill), I took myself off to TAFE and enrolled in a pre-vocational course in commercial cookery.  I wasn't on the dole so I wasn't subsidised. I paid $$$$ to attend.

I'd always wanted to work with my hands and I'd always enjoyed being around food.  I grew up making cheese and smallgoods and traditional dishes were made from offal.  Nowadays, I laugh when I see lamb shanks at $13 a kilo and a pig's head is $30. Talk about trying to squeeze the last cent out of something that has suddenly become fashionable! But I digress.

I toiled at my course and, a little over a year later, passed with a certificate. (I could've done the six month fast track but felt the longer course was better for me and, in hindsight, I think I made the right decision).  There were no places for bakery - it was either commercial cookery or bust.  I consoled myself with the fact that two modules included pastry and bread production albeit on a small scale.  After graduating with a head full of goals and hopes, I commenced work in the industry, working in a fine dining restaurant doing awful hours for godawful pay.  Sometimes I didn't get paid at all and was, in fact, I was expected to work for free. This is, as I soon discovered, a very common occurrence.  

Although I could see the writing on the wall in that it was becoming increasingly difficult to feed myself, I continued long enough to get to a level of confidence where I felt I could work as part of a kitchen team before leaving and returning to my old occupation where my salary increased five fold overnight and I was able to breathe in the financial sense.  Some might see this as an act of weakness. But when you're paying rent, petrol and all the other expenses that encompass everyday basic living, working in a place that doesn't allow staff meals and you're a hair's breath away from applying for the dole or ending up on the street?  Bugger that.  When realism hits romance over the head with a big stick, you do what you have to do. And I went back to a job that I was able to sustain myself by.  The work for someone my age and with my situation just wasn't there in commercial cooking.  I now see this as a blessing.

Despite my sadness at not being able to follow through with the goal I had set, I did not miss the egos and unrealistic working conditions. However, I did miss the act of being a part of food production. My hands longed to be part of that alchemy so I took up volunteer work in a soup kitchen while I worked elsewhere for a wage during the day.  This was actually a lifesaving strategy as being cooped up in an office can be quite depressing.  And it was here I started baking bread (because no one else wanted to do it).  I would love to say that I produced loaves that were a vision of loveliness and would make a master baker gasp with envy. Alas, they were not. But I did make some interesting shapes. Haha.

Fast track six months and recently, a pre voc course for bakery was advertised in the paper. Written in tiny printing at the bottom of an ad page in the local Messenger, it leapt out at me and I said to the person I was with at the time, "I just have to do this..."

Within days, I'd interviewed and once I'd received the acceptance, paid up everything to October, ditched the job and I am embarking on a course which I hope will give me the best three months of the year.  Amazingly, I landed a few days' work in a bakery and they're actually paying me real money.  Not huge (which I don't expect) but not the paltry pieces of silver you're forced to suck up in the restaurant trade (and then thank them profusely for). The bakers treat me like a real person. I do meaningful work.  I feel valued. And I am doing what I love. Now I half expect someone to blow up the building or a bus to run me over - after all, it can't be that smooth a transition, can it?

I am yet to land a bakery in which to do my industry placement on my course but that's okay. I'm in no rush. I reckon I'll get there.