The Hungry Poet: My Life in Food — The Home Bakery

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The Home Bakery

The Home Bakery was Crossgar’s only bakery. I remember the shop itself only vaguely – small, a modest banner above the door, an unadorned shopfront, undecorated, unexciting. I can’t even remember the baker. The reason for my hazy memory of the home bakery is due to the fact my mother never really allowed us to go in for fear of wanting everything on display. As a parent now, I can see the logic in this. Instead, we would sit in the car and wait. Also, if my mother ever were to go in it would rarely be for herself that she would buy something – she was a talented baker so maybe felt it was an expense we could do without, and could as easily whip up a sponge, cover it in whipped cream and decorate with tinned orange segments, shower with icing sugar, or make a batch of wheaten biscuits.

The items from the shop, however, I remember vividly. Apple turnovers, Paris buns, cream buns, doughnuts, jam doughnuts and if you were lucky, chocolate eclairs. Customers would sometimes bring them as gifts to my mother and aunty at the Post Office, and she would then bring home the remainder. They came in a white cardboard box, and she’d leave them on the kitchen table when she returned from work, without announcement. If you wanted a cream bun, like a sniffer dog, you had to first sense their presence in the house. If you missed out, it was your own fault.