Join me, Ashley Kitchens, as I chat with Natasha and Ed, who took a leap of faith from traditional life to running a 100% vegan bakery, Ed's BReD, a 100% plant-based organic sourdough bread shop in Whistler, British Columbia.
In the tranquil ski town of Whistler, Ed's BReD is making a buzz. Ed takes us behind the scenes, sharing the bakery's humble beginnings, to now being known across social media as the "sourdough doctors". Whether you're an aspiring baker, a vegan enthusiast, or just someone who loves a heartening success story, this episode promises a serving of inspiration and resilience.
Resources from this Episode:
Bred the Cookbook
If you want to connect with Natasha & Ed, visit the following:
Instagram: @eds_bred
Website: edsbred.com
_____________________________________________________________________
WE WANT TO HEAR FROM YOU!
Have a question, suggestion or comment for the podcast? Fill out form here
Plant Centered Nutrition Essential Resources:
Join me, Ashley Kitchens, as I chat with Natasha and Ed, who took a leap of faith from traditional life to running a 100% vegan bakery, Ed's BReD, a 100% plant-based organic sourdough bread shop in Whistler, British Columbia.
In the tranquil ski town of Whistler, Ed's BReD is making a buzz. Ed takes us behind the scenes, sharing the bakery's humble beginnings, to now being known across social media as the "sourdough doctors". Whether you're an aspiring baker, a vegan enthusiast, or just someone who loves a heartening success story, this episode promises a serving of inspiration and resilience.
Resources from this Episode:
Bred the Cookbook
If you want to connect with Natasha & Ed, visit the following:
Instagram: @eds_bred
Website: edsbred.com
_____________________________________________________________________
WE WANT TO HEAR FROM YOU!
Have a question, suggestion or comment for the podcast? Fill out form here
Plant Centered Nutrition Essential Resources:
Welcome to the Plant-Centered and Thriving Podcast. I'm your host, ashley Kitchens. I'm a plant-based registered dietitian and virtual nutrition mentor. I was raised on an Angus Cattle Farm, grew up with a lot of GI issues and used the power of plant-based eating to promote healing. Here you'll find inspiration, ideas and encouragement for your own plant-based journey. I'm so thrilled you're here today. Let's get started.
Speaker 1:Welcome to the show Plant-Centered Listener. My name is Ashley and I am your host today, and today I have two special guests with me that come with a very special story. So picture this. Imagine back in 2016,. You're renting out a kitchen once a week to make bread for your friends, and then that demand grows so strong you not only outgrow the equipment in this kitchen, but you also end up opening a 100% plant-based organic sourdough bread shop, and this bread shop blows up, and that's what led to our conversation today. They were approached by Penguin to create a cookbook, and the rest is history. This story is so cool to see how, when you are passionate about something in your life, how it beautifully comes into fruition. And that is the story that I have today for you with Natasha and Ed. So please join me in welcoming them to the show and sit back and listen to their wonderful story. Ed and Natasha, welcome to the show. I am so thrilled to have you here and talk about your new cookbook.
Speaker 3:Thanks for having us, Ashley.
Speaker 1:Yeah, absolutely. So I would like to actually start before we get into the origin story of the cookbook, which I cannot wait to hear more about. I would love to actually learn about both of y'all's journey when it came to coming over to British Columbia, starting your business, going vegan, all of those great things. I know I've done my own research, but I want to kind of hear it from you and how things have gone for you leading up to this cookbook, especially.
Speaker 3:Yeah, we didn't really know too much about Whistler when we first arrived. We came to Snowboard. The plan was to come for six months and then move to the East Coast of Montreal for six months. Just take sort of a year out of our professional careers, even though we both came to Whistler and Natasha was teaching and I was cooking. It was never meant to be a 10-year sort of plus go for citizenship and everything like that. But yeah, instantly fell in love with the town and do you want to take over from there?
Speaker 2:Yeah. So, as Ed said, we were kind of here for six months but very quickly we assimilated into the local community and I was doing volunteer work and we started doing yoga and met loads of other different types of people like all ages we knew, like seniors, families, young professionals, all the seasonal workers, and Ed started making bread for the local community as a kind of side hustle. At a similar time to me transitioning to veganism, I'd been vegetarian for most of my life and then actually landed a job randomly in the ski school. When I first arrived, having had a career as a teacher for 15 years, I had some industry issues, shall we say, with my teaching career and felt quite burnt out by what had happened, and so I decided I wanted a break and I wanted to go to a ski resort and just have a ski bum life for six months and sort of recalibrate what I wanted to do with my life. And during this time I ended up cooking for 800 ski instructors and kids.
Speaker 2:And the quality of food at these ski lodges for the ski school programs is not great. I mean, they're there to ski, they're not there to eat good, healthy food, really. So we're talking like boxes of wieners out of the freezer into the we didn't have a fryer, but into the oven, and I was just starting to read labels and saw what kind of ingredients were in these products. I had to make them. In the beginning I created a kind of disconnect that I wasn't eating it and it was just a job and so I'd just get through the season and have a great time. It was all about the snowboarding and socializing. But by the end of the season I really didn't like doing this. I didn't like making the food, and I started to learn more about healthy eating and plant-based eating and started to incorporate a lot more plants into my diet and eliminate things like cows milk and eat. I think in the beginning it was almond milk for me because there weren't so many options available as there are now. This was back in 2013 to 2014. And then by the end of the ski season we were off on farms. We did some placements working on organic farms together. Ed started the sourdough culture.
Speaker 2:When we got back to Whistler, I worked in an organic vegan juice bar and my role was a raw vegan chef and I had to basically do the salad bar and raw desserts. I had no idea about any of that type of food. You know, I just spent the season cooking crappy junk food and then before that, I'd been a teacher and just had very sporadic hospitality jobs. And so suddenly here I am with this task of running this salad bar, and I started learning about salads, learning about fruit, learning about, you know, spiralizers, dehydraters, all these amazing appliances that we can make healthy, nutritious food with and then eventually watched some documentaries and made the transition to saying you know, I'm vegan, ed, I don't want any animal products in the house. This is how I live now. If you want to live with me, this is how it's going to be.
Speaker 2:And he was a bit taken aback at first. He was a fine dining chef for 20 years, had lots of experience with, you know, butchery and that type of cuisine you know, using every part of the animal one and sourcing the best meat you can. But, like you know, it was very meat heavy, and so, you know, I was very lucky that he got on board with it at home and then eventually transitioned himself, and it was mainly due to your health issues, I think, but still the deal for you, wasn't it Ed?
Speaker 3:Yeah, totally so. Like everyone's aware that you know you should cut down dairy. It's not good for you know your heart and things like that. So I had a cardiovascular issue since I was a young kid. That lent. Eventually I had a stent fitted when I was 26, which is basically a little spring that they do keyhole surgery and it goes up in my A auto and it opens the valve to make the blood flow better.
Speaker 3:So when Natasha started on her vegan journey, it was kind of like we always we always ate a lot like a heavy vegetarian diet at home anyway. So it wasn't too much of a shock. It's not like I was eating steak every day at home, even though it was part of my career. I was definitely. I liked eating vegetables and fruits and things like that. So I was working at a farm to table. At the same time, sort of in our private life, we were going vegan.
Speaker 3:I was starting bread out of the restaurant I was working at. Like Tash said, we started doing yoga. So I was making loads of bread on my days off for the local community, friends, the yoga studio owner and gradually, word of mouth, people like we want to buy this. So we started a small started bread, basically out the kitchen from the restaurant one day a week and it was all just pre-ordered, done on trust, no pre-sales to sort of turn up.
Speaker 3:You know pre-ordered, and then do you want one next week? I'll put your name in a little book, and it started at 30 loads per week, always the same sour though and then gradually it grew to 50 to 70. And then within about six months it was at least 150 every week, with the small equipment that we had and the ovens it was. You know it was a professional kitchen but not professional bakery. So after about 18 months of doing that, the sort of restaurant we're like OK, this is, you know, really gaining momentum. Now it's taking more of your time than we thought. We kind of need. You know you need to be more focused here. So they sort of gave me the ultimatum shut it down or bring them into it to be a partner sort of thing.
Speaker 2:They had a concept of a sandwich shop.
Speaker 3:They had a concept that wasn't going to be vegan but didn't align with our morals. So we were just like OK, I think this is the push we need to go in the. The customers were saying we want the bread more often. The business the restaurant was saying you know, we want you to make a decision. So Natasha and I were lucky enough that we owned a house in the UK at the time, so we sold that, we put 100% of that into it and then got some extra funds through community lenders and banks and went all in and opened a sourdough vegan bakery. I don't think the community knew it was going to be vegan, they just wanted the sourdough bread. But we knew that we wanted to open a business that aligned with our beliefs and morals and ethics and all these sorts of things.
Speaker 1:Wow, that's amazing. I mean so you come over from the UK expecting to spend about six months in the Whistler area and you all have been there for how long now?
Speaker 2:10 years 10 years Wow, just over 10 years. We came here, we're citizens now.
Speaker 3:We've got our passport and everything.
Speaker 2:We're Canadians with accents. The bakery's been going for about five years, and so, yeah, we've been bakery owners for half of that.
Speaker 1:Wow, wow, that's incredible what goes into your day to day operations. I'm sure maybe every day is different to some extent, but just so that they can understand and me too, I'm curious what sort of that day to day looks like for both of you.
Speaker 3:Yeah, so because of my background in kitchens I've been in kitchens since I was 13. So I've got 25 years of sort of kitchen experience, running kitchens as sous chef, head chef, various sort of managerial roles, but never owned you know business. So that's been a huge learning curve. But generally I sort of run the back of house in the kitchen and the tasha runs the front of house and also takes care of sort of a lot of admin patty role and speaking to the bookkeeper and things. So we have to wear many hats.
Speaker 3:I generally take care of all the social media. I love taking photos and videos. So we have pretty active Instagram page where we share sort of tutorials on what we're making and specials. But yeah, sort of we make, you know, a couple of hundred loaves a day. We make sourdough, cinnamon buns, we make cakes and cookies. We have, like you know, espresso machines. So we have coffee and a retail section where we sell sort of like local arts and sort of ceramics and jams and now our cookbook. So yeah, it's quite a small bakery but it's all open plans. So we love the fact customers, families can come in and see where everything's been produced.
Speaker 1:And for you listening, if you go to edsbreadcom that's E-D-S-B-R-E-Dcom you will see exactly what Ed is talking about. With these incredible loads of bread that are being created and also all the treats that you create as well, I mean, there's so much it seems like to buy there. I was on the website earlier this morning and that was just drooling over all the options that you have. But I will say one thing that really stood out about what it is that you do in Whistler was you give back a lot to the community as well, and I would love for you to kind of speak on just some things that you do with your business that also contribute to the community and the surrounding areas with everything that you do.
Speaker 2:Well, we are actually a B-Corp certified business, so B-Corp Labs is a third party that have assessed our social and environmental impact from the inside out. They've scrutinized all of our receipts and certificates and payroll and everything that we do. So things that we do that have got us to B-Corp certification are sourcing locally. We buy a lot of produce in the summer months from farms that are just 30 minutes drive away and we source all of our grain from Canada organically. We always source organically and locally as we can, so supporting our local growers, our local economy, our local food producers. This is the first thing. We also donate 1% of our revenue to animal and environmental causes, so I think we've donated at least $20,000. We've planted 70,000 trees with a partner charity, trees for the Future. We plant trees in sub-Saharan Africa, where the land is very degraded, and we do that. It used to be. We planted a tree for every coffee that we sold, but then the price of tree planting has gone up so much that we've had to adjust that slightly. So we plant a tree for every two coffees that we sell now. And then we do things like you know. We just use compostable packaging. We strive for zero food waste, donating any extra loaves to our food bank or local businesses, like staff that work in neighboring businesses. You know, everybody loves us because we feed the community and then if we've got like treats, like cinnamon buns, like the hospital are always appreciative.
Speaker 2:We have the biggest bike park in the world and huge I think it might be the biggest ski resort in North America here in Whistler, so you can imagine there's a lot of injuries and broken bones and the staff are always, you know, kept up x-raying people or tying people up, so it's great for them to get a nice little pick me up from their local bakery. And then, you know, we just try to look after our staff as much as we can and make sure that they're earning a living wage. You know, life in a ski resort is very expensive. Things like accommodation are hard to find and landlords tend to get every dollar they can and that has an impact on the local businesses because then we have to make sure we're paying our staff enough that they can afford to live here in Whistler and not just afford to live here. But they want all the gear, you know. They want a new pair of skis, they want to have all the toys to go up and play in the mountains as well.
Speaker 2:So you have to make sure that you're being flexible with your schedule and then going beyond that, offering your local staff medical and wellness benefits, pension plan things like that that a lot of people in hospitality don't get, or even just giving them the legal amount of breaks you know, and holidays, and not overworking your people. So just trying to be the employer that we never had. Really, when we look back at people we worked for and the kind of things that they did, we couldn't imagine now staff even putting up with that. And we certainly try to be the best employers that we can. But that said, you know it all sounds very idealistic. It's not easy and it's certainly a struggle and it's about you know, understanding that and navigating through that and trying to realize that perfect is the enemy of done. Really, that's been a mantra for a long time for us and just trying to, you know, one foot in front of the other, do better than you've done before, learn from your mistakes and always improving on all of these things.
Speaker 1:I think that's fantastic and I think it's something good for all of us to remember and for you listening. If you're ever in the Vancouver area or in the Whistler area, by all means you have to check out Ed's Bread. I mean, it just sounds like such an amazing. It's already on my list when I come visit, so I can't wait.
Speaker 2:Yep, it's very unusual to have a vegan business in a ski resort, Right? So that's kind of quite unique, but we never had the idea. Let's move to Whistler and open a vegan bakery. That would be a crazy idea. Nobody would ever think of doing that. It just all happened quite organically. It's like you want us to open a bakery? Okay, we'll open a bakery, but we're vegan, so it's good.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I'm curious and I think that's I mean. Clearly this was meant to happen. I mean, you all moved there for a reason. This bakery came into fruition for a reason, the cookbook as well, and it sounds like the community was incredibly supportive of your bakery. That also happens to be vegan as well.
Speaker 3:It's supposed to be. Yeah, I mean, for us it was kind of like with our backgrounds. You know, we've been lucky enough to travel around the world and work in Australia and New Zealand and take all these sort of influences and incorporate them into our business and just make products that are really tasty and delicious to eat, whether you're vegan or not For us. You know, 90% probably of our customers aren't vegan Don't associate with that but they're all very happy to have oat milk in their coffee.
Speaker 3:You know I have loads of friends that prefer oat milk in their coffee to dairy because you get more flavour from the coffee. You know, it doesn't sort of coat your mouth in this sort of thick sort of creamy mixture. So yeah, I think we're always striving to be as best as we can with the products. We're very critical of the products to make sure they don't just taste great but they look good and how will it? You know, how are we going to display it, how long will it keep, and things like that, and just giving the customers that knowledge as well. Information.
Speaker 1:Yeah, yeah. I think that's so helpful and clearly it's been well received in your area as well, which is really fantastic to see. So I want to talk about the cookbook and kind of the origin story of how this happened, the inspiration behind it. How did it come to you to create this cookbook?
Speaker 2:Well, it was a series of events, that sort of snowboard into a book deal. So I think the first thing that happened was COVID, and and during the pandemic. So March 20, we shut down our bakery in 2020. And March 21, we had launched an online shop and we're taking orders for bread and we laid off all of our staff and Ed and I were just running it as a once a week thing. There were no instructions on how to operate during this pandemic At that point. It was very new. Nobody knew what COVID was, nobody knew who had it, who didn't have it. Everyone was kind of walking around in fear and also staying at home, as government said. So us launching this online shop was very fast and other businesses in town and around the world just totally closed for three months or so until they had clear guidance on how to operate.
Speaker 2:And because we were a new business, it was our first year We'd been having month on month record sales. So every month it was like, oh my God, it's a record sales month, oh my God, it's another one. And then it was like boom, close. And we were like we just we just couldn't just do nothing, like we were on this momentum of like keep going. And I remember on the Sunday when we closed, that the customers were coming in and they were saying you know, this business has shut down, the ski resort shut down. Are we going to be able to get bread? And I said, oh yeah, we're going to find a way. I was like you know, stay, stay, stay watching what we're doing on social media. We'll let you know what's happening, we're going to find a way. So we launched this online shop on March 21st. On March 29th, forbes ran an article about like businesses that had done a quick pivot and picked up that we were operating so quickly, had moved pivoted was the word. And then the local paper that we have here also picked it up and did a full page spread on us. So we started to get media attention just for the fact that we didn't stop doing business overnight. And then this led to us winning an award here in BC, a small business award for youth entrepreneur of the year. And then we started doing some podcasts and talking about our pivot. Everyone's so interested in this at the time how we managed to, you know, turn our business around so quickly. Blah, blah, blah. And then, before we knew it, we had Penguin email us and say we've been, we've heard you on some interviews, we've been watching what you're doing for the last few months.
Speaker 2:Salado itself, during the pandemic, had a massive boom. Every man and his dog had a sourdough starter, and so our Instagram following had accelerated by about a thousand followers a day through the months of April and May in 2020. So we just totally doubled, doubled again, doubled again our Instagram following. We started to become like the sourdough doctors. People were like you know, messaging us and asking you know, I've been trying to make this bread and this thing's gone wrong. Like, how can you help me? So then we added like a consultation to our website. People were paying like $250 to sit with us for an hour and talk about sourdough and baking. It was crazy. And then and then Penguin said would you like to write a cookbook? Now, at this time, it was 2021. We'd won the small business award, we'd reopened our bakery about four days a week, but we didn't have our original team. They'd all gone.
Speaker 2:And because we're in a ski resort, we're really reliant on immigration here seasonal workers coming and going and there was no movement. Borders were still pretty much closed for travel and work permits weren't being issued to foreign workers and so it was a bit stagnant. The labor force here, the people that were here, they had jobs and they kept them and there was no new blood coming in taking the new roles. So Ed was working from 4am to 7pm doing like two people shifts, basically because the demand was there, we still had bills to pay and we're desperately trying to recruit a team. And then it's like hey guy, you're working 18 hours a day, would you like to write a cookbook? I was like, oh my God, there's no possible way that we can do this. I don't even know if I can tell it about this email. I think it's just going to be much more of an edge.
Speaker 3:I didn't see it for two weeks. She was like I have to do my timing. She was like when am I going to tell him to do it? And I can't remember the exact time, but I'm sure we were sort of at home and a bit more relaxed.
Speaker 1:And it was instant.
Speaker 3:Yes, it was like you know, we just have to do it. You can't really turn down. You know there's so many people that write books and try and pitch it to these publishers and we didn't do that. Obviously, I'd obviously always dreamed of writing a cookbook, but the thought of it definitely at that point was, you know, not the right time, ridiculous, but at the same point the right time because I was in the bakery all the time creating new dishes and wanted to share those recipes. So we they pitched the idea to us a sourdough, vegan baking book.
Speaker 3:They saw a gap in the market. They saw the trend was sourdough, but also not too many sort of vegan, plant based baking books. Lots of cooking books, but not so much in that sort of baking realm, or it was just sort of more simple muffins and cookies and things. So they said a hundred recipes, we've got a year, year to write it and then it would go through some editing. So two recipes per week, you know to be, you know, tested and everything written out and everything like that on average. So it was very, it was full on. You know, we didn't really have a day off for two and a half years. We shot everything at the bakery as much natural light as possible, minimal props. You know, we just bought some nice plates and boards and things and it was just all about the food.
Speaker 2:But we had visited California a few times leading up to us opening the bakery and kind of doing a little bit of market research. And there are some phenomenal bakeries down in California, like Tartine and the Mill San Francisco by Josie Baker and the Lodge Bread down in LA, and we went into these phenomenal bakeries and what we noticed quite quickly was hardly anything in them was vegan, except the bread really. So we would go into Tartine and there'd be like a case of I don't know felt like a hundred pastries I don't know how many there were, but I remember saying to the guy like, do you have anything vegan? And the guy was so sweet and he said, oh, I'm so glad you asked. I'm actually vegan as well, but there's only one thing that's vegan and it's this little cake or whatever. I thought, oh, that's really sad.
Speaker 2:So I started to notice that there was a sort of new wave of vegan restaurants and cafes going on around the world. This was around, I don't know, 2016, 2017, 2018. The sort of influx of vegan. It got really trendy and in the mainstream. But then we just found that sourdough bakeries in particular, because they make this traditional style of bread. They're very old school in their mentality of everything. Everything has to be the way it's always done Eggs, butter, cream. So we thought, well, why can't you have a sourdough bakery and have it vegan? And when you look at baking books, as Ed said, like there was very little at the time, I think it's only literally the last year that our book and a few other people's books have actually come out related to vegan baking, specifically, but especially with the sourdough bakers that there weren't many. So we thought, yeah, this is a great concept to have a bread book and vegan baking all together.
Speaker 3:Yeah. So we wanted to be, we wanted to write a book that we wanted again, like opening the bakery. It was kind of what we were searching for, like Natasha said, like we didn't want to scare people off and just do it sourdough. So we have. You know, we have chapters in there. We have a gluten free chapter, cakes and cookies, scones, things to have with bread, a zero waste chapter, which is quite close to our hearts, so using the sourdough discard for pancakes or waffles, crackers, things like that. So a hundred recipes. It's kind of, yeah, there's a lot of tips and tricks in there.
Speaker 2:There's even a gluten free chapter.
Speaker 3:Yeah.
Speaker 1:Yeah, that's incredible and I know, like you mentioned, there are a lot of things to do with your leftover sourdough right.
Speaker 3:Sure yeah. Yeah like you said, waffles pancakes crumpets, English muffins. And then you can even spread it thin, you know, on parchment paper, put some seeds on it and make a nice cracker. Works really nice.
Speaker 1:Okay.
Speaker 3:The oven, yeah. So lots of stuff you can do with it, and we've got like a potato frittata recipe in there which works really almost like a thick omelette sort of thing.
Speaker 1:Yep, nice, and you mentioned things to go with breads or those like jams, spreads, like. What does that kind of look like? Just to give the listener a preview.
Speaker 3:Yeah, totally yeah. So there's hummus which we make at the bakery and we sell hummus and olives at the bakery. We started that during the pandemic sort of more deli items. We have a smoky bubblegarnish like an eggplant dip. There's a really nice beetroot and sunflower seed dip. So, yeah, ramesco BBQ. Ramesco is like BBQ red peppers with almonds and garlic, a little bit of chili. So we wanted there's some cheeses in there as well, like a ricotta and a feta cheese, and then you can use that feta cheese to put into some savory scones.
Speaker 2:Big beans British style big beans. Yes, oh yes.
Speaker 3:We've taken influences from our travels, from our heritage of being English, and then some North American classics like Pecan Pie, the cinnamon buns, sticky buns. So there's a real collection. There's not just loaves, there's small breads like pita bread, burger buns, doughnuts. So, there's a real sort of Brooklyn sort of keep coming back to. There's a celebration chapter for cakes, birthday cakes, minced pies for Christmas.
Speaker 2:So this book is something to use all year round for breakfast, lunch, dinner, celebrations. We wanted this to be a go-to baking book, so if somebody needs to bake something, they come to our book. It's just always there for them with a recipe ready for the purpose that they need it for. We didn't want it to be just bread or just cakes. There's a lot of those books out there, which is great if you're specializing in that type of thing, but for us we were quite inspired by books like oh she Glows by Angela Lyddon, which is an all-round vegan cookbook and one of the first cookbooks I bought in Canada when I went vegan and she had the same kind of thing breakfast, lunch, dinner, snacks, treats, all of that and I thought that's a book I just go to time and time again. It's not going to grow old and so we wanted sort of a classic book like that.
Speaker 1:Yeah, that's wonderful. Hers is actually one of the first cookbooks I ever bought, and it's still probably one that I use the most, so I couldn't agree with you more. Yeah, yeah, well, it sounds very comprehensive, which is incredible. Like you said, it's not just bread. There's so much more to it, and I'm really curious, during this process, how each of you complimented each other as you were creating this cookbook as well, kind of what your roles were.
Speaker 3:Yeah, I mean, I definitely led the recipes, the development and the sort of research into them, like testing them out. Natasha, the team, our friends, were sort of always tasting them and making sure that they you know, we had a mixed review of how they were. We wanted to really like make sure they were tried and tested, not just make it once and then, you know, put it out into the world. We wanted to make it achievable. There's recipes in there for a beginner, intermediate and recipes that are a bit more advanced, but there's something for everyone there.
Speaker 2:We started off just putting in the recipes that the first 50 recipes we came up with were the ones we already had at the bakery. And Penguin asked you to create contents page first and have a sort of skeleton of what the book's gonna look like. And so we put those into different chapters and then sort of filled in blanks. Okay, so we're gonna have a cookie chapter. So it was like, let's come up with some more cookies that we can add. And so that's where I sort of was able to assist Ed.
Speaker 2:I would often, you know, come up with ideas as well and feed them to Ed. And for example, like the potato frittata he mentioned earlier, like years ago, a friend had given us a Scottish cookbook, a really old book. It's referenced in our book. He's got an old Scott's kitchen or something and there was like a potato scone that they had, but it was really heavy on like cream and stuff. So I remembered this recipe and I remember eating something like it I can't remember if it was that exact recipe or something like it when I wasn't vegan and thinking, oh, they were really good, ed, could we make this vegan?
Speaker 2:And then he had the idea of you know, let's use the sourdough discard, let's do it in a pan as a skillet kind of bread, and morphed it into something new. And so that was my area to start with was kind of helping him with coming up with ideas, suggestions. And Ed's phenomenal If I make something at home, that's nice. He will gladly take it, the concept, and then remake it much better, which is really annoying, but also a compliment.
Speaker 1:It's the most annoying compliment.
Speaker 2:And then, you know, doing other research on things like we wanted to kind of get into the area of gluten. Gluten is such a dirty word these days. Protein is such a positive word. Nobody wants gluten, everybody wants protein. We thought it's time to pull the veil on this Gluten is a protein and go into that and go into, you know, ancient grains and talk about their health benefits, fermentation and its benefits. So doing lots of research on that.
Speaker 2:And then a lot of the work I did was also editing recipes. There's so much back and forth with editors, corrections to be made like conversions, conversions, cups, and grams and ounces. That was a whole nightmare of what we were going to actually convey and in the beginning I wanted to be inclusive. So I put grams, ounces and cups. And then Penguin said and I was going through all the recipes doing this Then Penguin was like I think this is a bit overwhelming, can we just fine tune this and stick to one or the other? And so I was like well, you know, people in the UK are going to use this book, people in Australia are going to use this book, people in random places, singapore might use this book. I don't know. Like we want this to be universal. We don't want it to be only for one demographic. So there was a lot of that.
Speaker 3:It was definitely a steep learning curve. I think when we took it on, it's like wow, we knew it was going to be a big project, but I don't think we knew how big it was.
Speaker 3:So I think the naivety probably helped us, to be honest, sort of just getting into it. And when we look back now it's two and a half years in the making. It's kind of a huge achievement and we're very proud of it. But we definitely people like, oh, it's a book too and we're like let's just see, see how this one goes. Hopefully, you know, we sell loads and it gets, you know, rave reviews. That's what we hope. It's coming up for Christmas, so a great time for people to be baking and sharing, you know, these recipes with friends and family. So fingers crossed.
Speaker 1:Yep, absolutely In the book too. Do you have, Ed? Do you kind of talk about some of your tips and tricks when it comes to making sourdough, Just because it is, from what I understand, a really complex thread to make?
Speaker 3:Totally. Yeah, I mean it's so simple Water, flour, salt. So on the outside, you know I could teach anyone to make a sourdough and we go through that step by step in the book. But it's just that sort of learning and growing and keeping you know the starter consistent and things like that. So we take through people's schedules. If you're just making bread once a week, you know the maintenance of a sourdough starter. You can keep it in the fridge versus on the counter at room temperature. So it depends how often you want to make bread. I always recommend that people sort of repeat the same recipe you know five to 10 times so you can see those subtle differences.
Speaker 3:The country sourdough is our sort of everyday loaf we sell. It's the most popular bread that we sell at the bakery. It's great for sandwiches and toast. It's a good all rounder. It's 40% whole grain, so it's got lots of flavour in there, but it's still nice and soft and light. So I always recommend that people make that first. But that's why it was important for us not just to be exclusively sourdough and to, you know, intimidate people that sort of like. I've made it before, I had an appreciation. Maybe now it's time to come back to it, so that's why we've got other things in there that are more simple to achieve.
Speaker 1:Yeah, yeah, yeah, that makes sense. Well, I won't ask about future aspirations, because I know right now you're sort of basking in this book being released after two and a half years of putting time and energy into this, which is always a great reminder that some things take time. I mean, really a lot of what you've done have just taken time, but it's aligned with your values and it's end up working out, which is so cool to see. Is there anything in this cookbook, like a recipe or something that you're really excited about or one of your favourites that you put in here, that the listener can kind of preview before they buy the book?
Speaker 3:Yeah, you know, the really good one, which is actually on the Penguin website, is our carrot cake. It's a spiced carrot and walnut cake so the recipe is actually available. So if people want to try it, they can jump on penguincom and just search for bread or egg tattern or even just carrot cake and they can. The full recipe is available online there that they can try out. There's a few others on veg news that have been published so people can sort of get tested out, see what they think. But the carrot cake was actually one of the first dairy free cakes that I ever made and then over, I think I've been making about 15 years and it's just developed and changed and tweaked the spices, so it's definitely one of our most popular cakes at the bakery. I always thought people are sort of umin and arin which to choose, like a chocolate cookie or carrot cake, and I'm like go for the carrot cake. So I have 50% carrots. Yeah, it's good for your eyesight, things like that. So yeah, it's a sweet treat, but it's got some vegetables in there.
Speaker 1:So there you go. Yes, absolutely yeah. Carrot cake is so wonderful, well, good, well, where can people because the book came out November 7th this year, which is so exciting in 2023, where can people buy the book, or where's the best place for them to find it?
Speaker 2:Oh, thank you for asking. Um, we have links to it on our website Eddsbreadcom, eds, b R E, dcom. But anywhere you can buy books should have it available. So in Canada, chapters Indigo is a big one, amazon, it's available worldwide, and so Amazoncom, if you're in the US, is a great one. But all the major book book retailers have it in stock. We've noticed all over the world. On the Penguin website, if you go to penguincom and search for bread, b R E D, the cookbook, you'll find this great feature where you can type in your zip code and it will tell you your local bookstore that has it or can order it in for you. So that's a really nice feature if you want to support local, which we're all about. So, yeah, lots of places.
Speaker 1:Wonderful, yeah, thanks for sharing that. And then social media wise where can people connect with you, follow you, get ideas, inspiration, all that great stuff.
Speaker 3:Yeah, we're most active on Instagram, so it's eds underscore bread, eds underscore B, r E D and, yeah, people can your listeners can feel free to send us little questions if they're not sure about you know a recipe, or if they just want to follow along to see we do tutorials into shaping, or even we welcome ideas, you know, for the new content and things like that. So we try and really sort of engage with our followers there.
Speaker 1:Oh, that's exciting. Yes, okay, wonderful. If you're in the area, oh, my goodness, definitely go visit Ed's bread, because it just looks absolutely stunning and delicious. So yeah, was there anything behind? Actually, I should probably ask this the B R, e, d spelling in bread?
Speaker 3:Yeah, it's just a portmanteau of my name, so it just naturally came up that people were like in the early days they were, oh, have you tried Ed's bread? And it just sort of seemed to roll off the tongue. And then when we open the bakery we wanted to try and move away from Ed's bread. It's, it's the website, because that we couldn't just get breadcom and it's the Instagram. So most people call it Ed's bread but the bakery on the door just says bread but underneath it still says made by Ed's. So it goes under a few sort of variation. Even in customers. Sometimes be in the shop they'd be like, hey, I'm Ed's. So you know it's just like Ed's place or whatever. So yeah, within the community it has a bunch of different names.
Speaker 1:Yeah, that makes sense. Okay well, Natasha, and thank you so much for joining me today and for sharing your story with the listeners. I'm thrilled to check out your cookbook, and I know people listening are as well. So thank you again for your time and sharing your stories.
Speaker 3:Thanks for having us.
Speaker 1:Thank you, ashley, it's been a pleasure. Thank you so much for listening to the Plant-Centered and Thriving podcast today. If you found this episode inspiring, please share it with a friend or post it on social media and tag me so I can personally say thank you. Until next time, keep thriving.