Kitchens · Issue 14
Bread at 4 a.m.
A night shift with the bakers who feed a neighbourhood before it wakes.
The ovens at Gower Street Bakery are lit at eleven at night. By four, the first loaves are cooling and the street is still dark.
There are three of them on the night shift: Mireille, who has baked here for nineteen years, her nephew Sam, and a sourdough starter older than both of them combined.
The work has a rhythm you learn in your shoulders. Divide, shape, rest; divide, shape, rest. Mireille does not look at the clock. She looks at the dough, pokes it, and moves on.
"The bread decides when we go home," she says. On humid nights that is seven. In January, when the flat above the bakery is cold, the dough sulks and they stay until nine.
By the time the café next door opens, two hundred loaves have gone out in a van to schools, a hospital canteen and eleven corner shops.
The work has a rhythm you learn in your shoulders. Divide, shape, rest; divide, shape, rest. Mireille does not look at the clock. She looks at the dough, pokes it, and moves on.
"The bread decides when we go home," she says. On humid nights that is seven. In January, when the flat above the bakery is cold, the dough sulks and they stay until nine.
By the time the café next door opens, two hundred loaves have gone out in a van to schools, a hospital canteen and eleven corner shops.
“The bread decides when we go home.”
Photographs
Afterwards
Most customers never see the night shift. They see the shelves full at seven and assume the bread arrived the way milk used to, on its own.
Mireille would like one thing changed: people should buy the bread whole, not sliced. "Slicing is where it goes stale," she says. "Take it home and tear it."
Mireille would like one thing changed: people should buy the bread whole, not sliced. "Slicing is where it goes stale," she says. "Take it home and tear it."
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Six soups for a cold flat
One pot, one hour, one loaf of yesterday's bread.