Now you can buy almost every other kind of food – and drink – online there seems no reason why you shouldn’t buy bread but it feels slightly counter-intuitive. Bread costs so little that it seems a bit mad to spend half its worth in post and packaging charges. But I’m lucky enough to live in a city (Bristol) which has some excellent bakers. If I lived out in the country and didn’t have the time or inclination to bake I’d probably regard it as a boon.
Anyway I discovered that one of our local bakers Hobbs House Bakery is now offering a home delivery service from their website. You can buy a selection of their breads as a sample box (for £35) or a 2kg spelt sourdough called The Shepherds Loaf for £21 – the one that was featured on the BBC4 programme In Search of the Perfect Loaf the other day (which at the time of writing you can probably still catch up with on iplayer)
Baker Tom Herbert claims that the service is an ‘industry first’ but in fact another local baker, Richard Bertinet, pipped him to the post by offering his bread online prior to Christmas. You can buy it on its own for a rather more reasonable £6.50 (for a 1.2kg loaf + £4.95 p & p) or as part of a Breadlovers’ Gift Box (£40.25) which includes the wonderful Opinel bread knife I wrote about last year
Obviously these loaves aren’t as expensive as they seem on the face of it: they’re dense and they keep so you can use them for days but it does seem a fair amount of money to spend nonetheless.
What about you? Do you – would you – buy bread by post? If not where do you buy it or do you make your own?