An Ode to The Fumbally
SCÉAL #09 - A trip down memory lane and our final Fumbally bake day for a while.
Hello, Charlotte and Shane here for this edition of the Scéal newsletter.
If you follow us on social media, you may have seen our big announcement that we have finally signed a lease for our very own bakery space. This has been a dream of ours since we started Scéal in the winter of 2016. We're incredibly excited, and from all the lovely messages that have poured in since, it's very clear that you are too. We fought hard for this space over the last 18 months. In the coming weeks, we'll be announcing the bakery's location and, with it, a newsletter on how we finally got the paperwork in our hands.
Since starting this small bakery business, we've received A LOT of support along the way to get to this point in time. It really does take a village to nurture a growing business like ours. Part of that Scéal family is The Fumbally Cafe; the connection runs deep, and we'd like to take the opportunity now to tell you why they mean so much to us. Without them, Scéal Bakery may not exist today. To tell the story of how important the Fumbally is to our business is to tell the story of Scéal Bakery so far…
Our hope in telling this story is that perhaps you have a business idea bubbling in your head, and this newsletter will encourage you to take the next step. Maybe you're a business owner who sees a flame of passion in a current employee, and this will fuel you to give them space to grow and experiment.
Shane here and I’m going to take you back to the begin in 2013/2014 when I first set foot in the Fumbally Cafe. After the first bite of the first dish I ate at the Fumbally Cafe I knew I wanted to work there. It was their workhorse of a porchetta sandwich. A tangy plum compote cut through the fatty pork shoulder, that was sumptuously slow cooked with all the classic herbs and white wine. Salty caper mayo and peppery leaves tied the whole ciabatta sandwich together. Soul food.
This style of food appealed to me, the exciting prospect that I could have the chance to learn a different way to cook other than the stuffy French classical style I’d been taught in college and in other jobs around the city.
When I finally got talking to Aisling, the owner of the Fumbally, she dutifully explained how everything worked, the specials, the soup, the sambos and salads! Some simple stuff done well with good ingredients. Everything I wanted from a meal and wanted to cook for myself. The interview was a mix of what was expected of me and what I expected to get out of the job, I was given the challenge of coming up with a menu for a day with one meat and one veg special, a soup and three salads.
I ran back to the library in D.I.T Cathal Brugha Street (now T.U Dublin) and digested just about every River Cottage, Ottolenghi and vegetarian cook book in there. Even though I was just applying for a part time position to pick up the slack on the weekend brunch rush, I wanted to go head first in the deep end and impress. I went back the same day with some mad menu ideas and eagerly talked them through with Aisling who dissected my plagiarized ideas and asked me to explain how I would pull this off in a cafe setting. I blagged my way through and maybe overdid it a little (smoked crispy chickpeas 😬) but was given the chance and a start date.
On day one I was tasked with making a big batch of soup. Until then the nicest soup I knew how to make was a delicious minestrone. But my recipe had charred bits of chorizo and I needed to keep this one vegetarian. So wanting to get the most flavour possible into the base, I took half the day making a vegetable stock with the older weary veg from their giant veg display. They were not impressed, a pot of soup that took all day to make and had barely any substance. It was clear I could chef but I didn’t really know how to cook. So I was stuck on eggs and my eggucation began.
The perfect Fumbally eggs is somewhere between a soft set omelette and a scramble. As Luca, the other owner, once said “you have to feel the pepper and garlic” when my first few came out a bit bland. I was going too light on the flavour, too careful with with seasoning. This is an important lesson I would learn time and time over the next year as I learned the ways and dishes from the Fumbally play book. Currys with 5 times the spices I would normally use, a melting pot, from spanakopita to maffe curry to brilliant balls of arancini.
I learned quickly from the team and the nurturing environment. I started to come up with my very own savoury specials. Inspired by my time in River Cottage and a new found love for making bread. You see at the same time I was writing a paper on the revival of sourdough for my final year of college. So I was eager to get bread on the menu and practice the theory.
I would stay back after work for some dough time, shaping up a batch of sourdough I had mixed on my lunch break. Coming in early to bake it off the following day before the ovens were filled with roasting veg and sausages for the meat sambos.
Before long there was a slice of my sourdough on every special and the surplus was served toasted with a nut butter or jam. My enthusiasm and extra work must have caught the eye of Luca and Aisling as they approached me with the idea of teaching a workshop in sourdough not long after this. With their encouragement and enthusiasm I overcame a crippling fear of public speaking and dove deeper than ever into the dough to ensure what I was saying was correct.
This was the nudge I needed to take the plunge and pursue my passion for baking. Not long after this Charlotte and I headed for the hills of San Francisco to learn from the best, and the rest as they say is history.
As the Scéal goes, myself and Shane moved to San Francisco to train as bakers. Living over there we craved the atmosphere and homely feeling of the Fumbally Cafe while we were away from Ireland. We had kind of convinced ourselves that we'd find a similar space to fall into while living and working on the west coast - a little presumptuous of us. The Fumbally as it turns out is a unique place, one of a kind. Something that we've come to accept, there is nowhere else like it. It feeds the community, champions independent suppliers, nurtures staff, promotes artists and musicians, provides a space for growth and experimentation and learning, the list goes on.
In late summer of 2016, when we landed home in Dublin, it was the first place we headed to for a coffee and a feed of delicious, soul-comforting food. The same question bounced from one familiar face to the next: '“What are your plans now that you're home?” Well, start our own bakery, of course.
Chatter began about the possibility of renting a small portacabin kitchen on an urban farm in Glasnevin. We couldn’t believe our luck. How could something so romantic exist in Dublin and people weren't screaming about it from the rooftops? When we found out the kitchen was rented out by our friend, and Fumbally manager, Rossa, we jumped at the opportunity. It's all connected, folks.
But how would we pay for our deposit on the kitchen, buy the equipment needed to start a microbakery, and cover all the other costs of getting a business off the ground? We had little to no savings between us after all the travels. So we hatched the plan to apply for a stall at the Dublin Christmas Flea Market, selling Charlotte's beloved Christmas puddings, jars of mincemeat, and mince pies. All with the hope of raising enough money to cover those first few large payments to get our bakery dream started.
The Dublin Christmas Flea Market and its big sister, The Dublin Flea Market, were founded by Aisling Rogerson, Luca D'Alfonso (owners of the Fumbally Cafe), Sharon Greene, and Dave Dunn.
Once the Flea gang gave us the green light on our market application, we hit the ground running with a plan. Over the course of a weekend, we cleared a back room at my parents' house to make a Christmas pudding production space. We scrambled together a couple of free stainless steel tables, scrubbed out an old family fridge, and had every new business owner's first trip to Ikea for storage containers.
Those very first Scéal Christmas puddings were steamed in the Fumbally cafes ovens. Myself and Shane bartered our time for the use of the kitchen on the couple of days the cafe was closed. In return, I baked pastries for the cafe to sell in the mornings, and Shane worked a couple of shifts in the kitchen. A wonderful system where no money exchanged hands. The first ‘unofficial’ launch of Scéal Bakery went great. I printed labels on thick card, raided my dads garage for shelving and props, roped my sister into sign writing. It was a hard graft and looking back we really had no clue what we were doing. After a wonderful, exciting weekend, we had haggled and giggled and just about gathered enough money to pay a deposit for the small kitchen at Elmhurst Cottage Farm.
Elmhurst Days
In the depths of winter, Scéal moved into the the portacabin kitchen at Elmhurst Cottage Farm, measuring 14 feet by 10 feet. We creatively shuffled our second-hand equipment around to make the most out of the space, invested a small sum from the Christmas market in a Rofco bread oven and we began baking. Very small to begin with, only a handful of loaves a week, but the dream was in motion.
We had two monthly markets in our sights to begin with - The Dublin Flea and Fusion Sundays. Both ran by Fumbally Cafe illumni. Sadly neither market is running anymore. It’s a terrible shame that those spaces no longer exist in Dublin for other small businesses that are trying to enter the market. They were invaluable for us getting the bakery business operating and maintaining that all important cash-flow. A market space can be used as a testing grounds for small start-ups. For a very minimal financial input we were able to test out menu items, play around with flavour combinations, introduce ourselves to wide range of demographics within the local community and speak with other business owners one to one. We used those fledgling market stall days as if they were our very own bricks and mortar shop. Those early days were some of the best craic. From the outset, we were busy, often selling out of loaves and pastries early on most market days. It was clear that there was a demand for a sourdough and viennoiserie bakery in Dublin. We were on the right path.
With an official bakery space, we were able to dip our toes into the pastry wholesale scene in Dublin. The first being Proper Order Coffee, followed by Fia Cafe in Rathgar. Niall Wynn, founder, and owner of Proper Order, introduced himself through his wife Aliona, who was the barista in the Fumbally Cafe at the time. Ali saw the potential in the pastries I was barter baking for the Fumbally, and soon after, we were in talks with Niall about supplying his shop. Hands up, who remembers Scéal’s weekly sourdough subscription from Proper Order? Another Fumbally connection that was influential in our growth and organic progression came from our second wholesale account at Fia with our best pal Keith Coleman. Keith and Shane met working as chefs in the Fumbally Cafe circa 2014.
The Dublin Flea and Fusion Sundays became a staple in our monthly calendar. As the summer months ended we realised we were quickly going to outgrow our little bakery. We needed more space for ovens, fridge space for overnight fermentation of doughs and storage for grains and flours.
So when September came around we bid a farewell to the farm, to our dear friends, to the chicks and to the ducks, and started the next stage of our journey with Scéal in a larger production unit. This green oasis that was home was run by our gorgeous friends Rossa and Nadja. Like us, Elmhurst Cottage Farm was a new transition and way of life for them. There was comfort in knowing we were starting our journey with Scéal and the leap into the unknown of running a food business with friends who were on a similar path. Impromptu breaks for coffee and cake, family breakfasts on the grass among the berry bushes, lunches enjoying the produce from the farm all lead to deep chats about the difficulties, woes and challenges of starting your own business from the ground up.
More Space, Bigger Bakes
In September 2017, nearly a year to the day of moving back to Dublin from the US, we relocated to our commercial kitchen at the Spade Enterprise Centre. Here, we have steadily grown our business to where we are today. With more space and a large electricity supply came larger pieces of equipment. I was finally able to use our table top pastry sheeter for pastry production, after 8 months of laminating every single pastry by hand. And Shane was able to utilise our walk in fridge for overnight fermentation of his sourdough. We purchased another Rofco bread oven, a large convection oven for pastries, and, importantly, a van for deliveries! The expansion into more production space allowed us to take on more wholesale accounts - this time including sourdough loaves as well as pastries. Deepening our connection with Dublin 8 and our successful market stall, we approached Luca and Aisling at the Fumbally to retail our sourdough loaves, allowing our customers in the community to buy loaves every week, regardless of a market weekend or not. They warmly agreed and the Scéal/Fumbally connection grew another level. With that came daily deliveries our our beloved morning buns, croissants, and pain au chocolates.
The Saturday Food Market
We're now in 2019, when a new opportunity to join a community food market was presented to us by Aisling. Always a driving force in supporting the Dublin 8 community, promoting local suppliers, and advocating for change. Alongside some of Dublin's finest suppliers and growers, including McNally's Family Farm, Lilliput Trading Co, McEvoy Nurseries, The Dublin Food Co-Op, White Mausu, Elmhurst Cottage Farm, Fumbally Ferments, and Harry's Nut Butter, we gladly said yes. The market was housed in the gorgeous space of the Fumbally Stables Long Room every Saturday morning.
Those Saturday market days were a whirlwind. Dublin 8 instantly supported the new project. Our Scéal Bakery queue would snack down Fumbally Lane from 9.30am, with customers patiently waiting until doors opened at 10am. A consistent weekend market gave us the chance to build on our menu and the variety of pastries and sourdough we could produce. At one point, I can recall having 9 different loaves on offer and 14 pastries. There was a lot of mental arithmetic going on back then, and we had to learn of some spiel every week for our rotating seasonal items and market specials. For 12 solid months the market gained momentum. Summed up with a tremendous end of year Christmas market, where the entire Fumbally Stables building came to life with 30 different traders.
It was towards the end of 2019 that we started to look for a permanent home for Scéal Bakery.
The Fumbally Stables Hatch
Everyone knows what happens next - St. Patricks week, March 2020 - the world shut down with the arrival of the global pandemic. Within a couple of days of government announcements and restrictions, we lost all of our market stalls. Our lifeline for revenue and reaching customers on a weekly basis had vanished.
We closed the business for 3 months, with nowhere to sell our goods. No bricks and mortar shop, and our commercial kitchen was out of bounds for customers. During that time, we rebuilt our website and were one of the first businesses in Dublin to implement a thriving click-and-collection system. We pivoted from serving customers directly at our market stalls to solely operating online. Ensuring we adhered to all government guidelines, we spoke with the Ash and the Fumbally gang about renting the Fumbally Stables Long Room one day a week while it was out of action. They gave us somewhere to go when we had little to no options.
In our heads, this was a short-term plan while we waited on society to open back up again. Our search for our own premises was halted during this period. Meeting in-person in doors and viewing commercial properties was out of bounds. However, having said that, we didn’t have the time to devote to looking for a premises. The next two years turned into an incredibly busy period of time for our bakery. We were completely and totally overwhelmed by the response of our customers when we opened the Fumbally Stables Hatch. Our webshop would sell out within minutes of going live for orders. Each week, we’d reassess, asking ourselves “Could we bake more?” and were taken aback when everything would sell out again. One day of collections turned into two, with the guided support and weekly check-ins from Ash, who would see how we were doing or if we needed anything. Over time, we moved away from our online order system once the need for it petered out, but kept our weekly spot at The Hatch for retail.
After three years of operating out of the Fumbally Stables (a little sporadic towards the end), the time has come to say goodbye. We’d like to invite you down to our Final Bake from the Fumbally Stables Hatch. It’s a farewell to the space that has nurtured and held us through the toughest and most joyous of times. This event also provides us with an opportunity for us to say a big thank you to you, our customers, for your unwavering support over the years. From our emerging market stall days at the Dublin Flea Market to our sell out bakes from the Fumbally Stables Hatch, many of you from Dublin 8 and beyond have traveled to join us over the years.
Saturday 26th August, 10am until sold out
We are going to try our absolute best to bake as much as possible. If there are some disappointed folks who don’t manage to get a delicious pastry or loaf of sourdough on the day, please know this is not the end. We will be back baking soon, every week, every day.
Our focus and energy over the coming months will be dedicated to growing our team for our new bakery space (more coming on this next week). We’ll also be working alongside our designers and contractors to ensure that our doors open as soon as they can.
See you there. Lots of loaf, Charlotte and Shane xxx
We are so happy for you guys and cannot wait to taste all the lovely bakes that will come from your new place.Huge congrats.
Lynn