Annemarie:
OK, my ambition to ‘wild bake’ as I travel through Africa and to discover more about the baking traditions of each country is proving harder to fulfill than I first thought.
My initial brush with baking in Namibia saw me completely ripped off in a streetside village bakery in the middle of the bush. Lovely people but they saw the Mzunga (white woman) coming and I didn’t know about bargaining at that point. The result was a sickly sweet and oily loaf, which cost the equivalent of a large sliced in the UK. Eventually we gave most of it away to four young boys. They asked for sweets but when presented with bread were over the moon and ran off chanting ‘bread, bread’ and fighting each other for the biggest chunk.
Our second encounter was much more encouraging, in the small town of Mazabuka, centre for the sugar growing district of Zambia. We had driven through wheat, cane and coffee fields, past tankers carrying molasses that reminded me of a red and black treacle tin, past monumental, heavily loaded lorries, past hundreds of cyclists bent double, carrying heavy sacks over their cross-bar. Then we came upon the Bethlehem Bakery; good heavens, what an amazing place – freshly baked focaccia, french sticks, muffins and lovely light bread rolls. The manager, Jack Michelo proudly showed me behind the scenes, they had just baked the focaccia in the morning shift and it smelt divine. Most of the bread is baked overnight and sells very quickly next morning so it’s a successful little business and what’s more, this is a social enterprise. The ovens, original premises and set up were funded by the St Bakhita Catholic Church and its supporters but now all the profits go to help the local vulnerable communities. One of their expert bakers has recently spent 6 months in Italy honing his craft so it has great parallels with the ‘Eye Bake’ team in Kenya. www.eyebakekenya.com
Inspired, I finally got round to trying to bake Nigella’s banana bread in our camp oven. Although a bit burnt on the bottom, once trimmed, I had high hopes and proudly offered Martin first taste. “Rather like chewing on a burnt stick!” was his reaction. The remains were fed to chickens, or rather, offered first to a goat, then, when it turned up its nose, sprinkled around for some chickens. They didn’t exactly mob me for more, it really was too smokey.