Being a successful baker on a Scillonian island demands a well-stocked store-cupboard of skills. Not only do you have to know your flours and kneading techniques, but you need to be an expert on weather, tides and stock control too. And a cool head comes in pretty handy as well.
So says Wolverhampton-born Barney McLachlan, who celebrates more than ten years at the helm of The Island Bakery in Higher Town on St. Martin’s. When he starts work at 4.30am, he has to guess how many bread loaves, pizzas and pasties to make - and that depends on the weather and when and where the inter-island launches are arriving. “If it looks like poor weather, I know people won’t be making day trips here. On the other hand we may get more customers from St. Martin’s, who are looking for something to do on a wet day. I have to make a judgement on numbers within minutes of getting in.”
On fine summer days, if a boat arrives full, Barney may receive up to a hundred customers at once. Island Bakery is not only a welcome source of sustenance, but with its tables in the peaceful agapanthus-decked courtyard in front, an obligatory stop-off on any island tour too. “Sometimes I then get the nod that an extra boat is being laid on to bring the passengers who didn’t fit on the first one, so then the pressure’s on to bake more produce.”
Doing that is not easy though, as the bakery’s kitchen is tiny, and as soon as Barney finishes making his breads, other team members arrive to start on cakes and pasties. “There’s not really space to make two products at once, so we have to hot-stove it.”
Boat timetables dictate what will sell too. If a boat is landing at Higher Quay at around eleven, customers will be after coffee and cake. But if it goes to Lower Quay and passengers have to walk up across the island, they’ll arrive at lunchtime wanting pasties or filled rolls. “Either way, customers tend to arrive all at once, which takes some getting used to - and a cool head,” Barney smiles. During the pandemic families entered one at a time, a system Barney now plans to keep. “It worked well and took away a lot of the stress.” Some days he can get as many as 600 customers.
Freshly baked bread, a rare commodity on Scilly, is Barney’s big thing and something he mastered while working as night baker for over a decade before taking the plunge and setting up The Island Bakery. The bestseller is his granary, made with Northampton-produced Heygates flour, which he also sells in a half size as a Camper’s Loaf. The latter was created after Ben and Caroline Gillett, who run the campsite, told Barney that a lot of bread was being wasted, so he came up with a diddy-sized loaf which proved a hit.
Gourmet customers make a beeline for the guest breads, which run for a week at a time. Favourites include the pillow-soft seasalt focaccia, made with salt produced on the island by Andrew Walder, and the cheese, sage and onion plait, using home-grown sage. Both make a perfect lunch on one of St. Martins’ spectacular sandy beaches - that’s if you’ve not already stocked up with crab and lobster rolls, bulging with pristine-fresh shellfish from St. Martin’s or Bryher, topped with feathery sprigs of home-grown fennel.
Even making bread, though, isn’t as straightforward as you’d think. Barney always has half an eye on his stocks of flour, all of which has to be imported from the mainland via St. Mary’s on two different freight boats. It’s a lengthy journey, and of course if the weather turns bad, boats can be delayed or cancelled. “I have to work out what stocks I already have, what I’ve ordered and when it’s likely to arrive, and what I’m going to run out of,” smiles Barney. “It’s quite a juggling act. If I get it wrong, there could be no bread. That’s happened only once, and luckily it was a quiet day and the customers were happy to take pasties instead.”
Other bakeries might make life easier for themselves by freezing their produce, just in case. But Barney likes to bake everything “bang on fresh.” That’s particularly important in the case of his famous pasties, made to a recipe from a 1945 Women’s Institute cookery book, that a local fisherman brought in 20 years ago. Barney’s made a few tweaks, like using vegetable margarine rather than lard and freshly ground pepper instead of pre-ground white, but the key ingredients such as Cornish beef skirt and swede remain. The pasties are now the bakery’s bestseller, usually sold out by early afternoon, but in the rare event that any are left over they appear at the family’s supper table and are quickly demolished by Barney’s two children. Equally tempting in the savoury department are his sausage rolls, homity pies, and bacon frazzles.
There’s plenty for the sweet-toothed too, including a fudgy moist chocolate cola cake that few customers can resist. “Shortly after I started, I had a 14-year-old schoolkid called Dan doing work experience here. He had a recipe for chocolate and cola cake that he wanted to try out, so we made it, and it’s been our most popular cake ever since.
Much of the hands-on baking is now taken care of by able islanders whom Barney has trained up, allowing him to stand back and make sure the bakery is heading in the right direction. “I’m always checking what works,” he says. “I want us to do what we’re doing really well.” he says. Looking at the queues snaking across the courtyard, he’s succeeding.
The Island Bakery, St. Martin's
Image credit: adjbrown.com
