![]() "I really didn't want to start a posh cooking school," she says. This highlighted to her the UK's need for more skilled artisan food producers. "We had just started the Bakehouse, and we couldn't find a baker," she says. Swan Parente, a former NHS child psychologist, founded the school as she was approaching retirement. From September 2010 it will equip aspiring artisans with the skills to move into trades such as small-scale baking, brewing, butchery or cheesemaking. Currently there are five-day "fundamentals" courses, as well as specialist day courses in a range of subjects from cider-making to autumn preserves, but the school is also taking applications for a unique two-year diploma programme in artisan food production. Reflecting what Swan Parente calls her "fundamentalist" approach to food, the Welbeck Bakehouse, along with a farm shop specialising in meat and game from the estate, soon followed.įor another, what you learn here could set you up with a new career. Stichelton, the coveted raw-milk blue cheese, came first after a chance meeting between Alison Swan Parente, who occupies Welbeck Abbey with her family, and Randolph Hodgson of Neal's Yard Dairy. To visit Welbeck is to be bombarded with great food. For one thing, it is located on the Welbeck estate, which – as well as being the seat of the Duke of Portland – is an already extremely food-orientated place. The not-for-profit school, which opened in rural Nottinghamshire in September, is unlike any other. A day's baking here, enjoyable though it is, is only half the story. But compared to some of the school's other students, we are lightweights, dabblers, fly-by-nights. It took us a day to produce this, along with a loaf of tsoureki, a plaited Greek bread enriched with spices, butter and eggs, and by the end of the session, my fellow pupils and I were wilting like leftover tuiles. ![]() Once baked, the loaves were given three coats of melted butter, then brushed with a sweet glaze and rolled in vanilla sugar.
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