Food & friendship 100 years of the WI

Mary Young, a keen bread baker, joined her local WI in Forest Gate, east London, to keep in touch with people

I can’t remember the last time I bought a loaf! Since starting to bake using the sourdough method, I now make bread two or three times a week. I also bake for the WI cake stall at our local craft and farmers’ market, set up by two founder members of our WI.

Members bring along all kinds of cakes, bakes, jams and chutneys, which are sold to raise funds for speakers and good causes. Many customers look forward to the frst Saturday in the month – with occasional food and music events, the market has added a new dimension to our community.

I’m intrigued by the factors involved in making cakes to sell. I try to bear four things in mind with my offering: economy, quality, eye-appeal and equal-sized slices!

Local shops offer a huge range of ingredients, such as fours – I’ve tried gram, barley, brown rice, chestnut, tapioca and coconut. I love experimenting with different fours and adding pumpkin, sunfower or faxseeds – or currants for a fruited loaf. Coconut oil can take the place of butter in some recipes, while fruit powders make brilliant natural food colourings.

For my bread, I keep two starters on the go in glass jars in my fridge. They are simple mixes of four, water and wild yeasts, which are naturally present. My frst starter began three years ago and uses rye four only – it always becomes very active and bubbly. The second ‘grew’ out of the frst and is kept going with wholewheat or sometimes a malted wheat four.

Each time I make a loaf, I take about half the starter from each jar and mix them together. I replenish each jar with more four and water. It’s great to see your bread developing – the longer the better for favour and digestibility, and there’s no need to buy yeast.

I’m always reading about baking. The Handmade Loaf by Dan Lepard is inspiring, as are Yotam Ottolenghi’s recipes for fatbreads. These are my favourite breads – vehicles for all kinds of spicy deliciousness. Oh, and Chelsea buns!

I think a lot of people underestimate what they can achieve with baking. Bread dough is a lot more forgiving than fddly pastry work. A batch of dough can be knocked up with a bread machine’s pizza programme in just 45 minutes. Breadmaking is also a great activity to do with kids – dough loves warm hands!

‘I was touched to see so many WI members when I launched my market stall’

Laura Merriman has been a member of the Tea and Tarts WI in Huddersfeld, West Yorkshire, since it was set up fve years ago

I’m quite a traditional person for someone my age. I’ve always knitted and baked, so it felt quite natural to join the WI. I wanted to make new friends and, having found it quite hard with two children, I needed something that was just for me.

I now have so many friends I can call upon, plus it’s great fun to try new activities such as jive and belly dancing. One member is teaching me how to crochet. When I set up my business, it was touching to see so many WI members at my frst market stall.

I got the idea for my business when I visited a shop called Posh Puds while on holiday in Anglesey three years ago. It was selling individual cheesecakes, so that everyone could have the favour they wanted.

I’ve been making chocolate cheesecake for many years, using a family recipe passed on by my mum. I’ve made it so many times that the page in my recipe book is totally chocolate-stained.

Cheesecake is always a crowd-pleaser at parties, weddings and at Christmas. You just put it in the freezer, then get it out when you need it. We all love cooking and baking, but I never thought that this could end up as a business.

Last winter I bought my frst individual moulds and found an excuse to make cheesecakes to take to every party I attended. At the time I was working in a school, which was rewarding, but the stress was starting to take its toll.

My resolution for 2013 was to sell individual cheesecakes at a local farmers’ market by the end of the year. It has been a long slog – there were tears over curdled cheese, I scoured the country to fnd the right moulds, and I’ve had to get my brain around costings and food hygiene. But I did it.

In October 2013, I Love Cheesecake made its debut at Upmarket, Huddersfeld. I now supply several restaurants and cafés, and have a Friday stall at Huddersfeld train station, treating teatime commuters to a portion of cheesecake.

I hate waste. I’ve got a master’s degree in Sustainable Development and want to keep that environmental thread in my business. We grow our own fruit, which gives me loads of blackcurrants, strawberries and raspberries for the fruity cheesecakes. My blackcurrant & liquorice is one of the most popular favours. We’ve had some lovely feedback, including one of my favourites: ‘I need the Baileys cheesecake in my life!’

I owe a lot of thanks to my family and also to members of my WI, who’ve always been on hand to sample. Most of all I owe thanks to my mum’s original cheesecake recipe.

Kathy Shand, a member for four years, is involved with three WIs in the Derbyshire villages of Kirk Langley and Duffeld

We live in times of excess. Cookery shows, celebrity chefs and recipe books encourage over-consumption. I enjoy the simplicity of my mum’s oat biscuits. Goodness knows what fats she used. I expect on gloomy days it was lard, at best margarine.

My mum made a scrawly, half-hearted attempt at making herself a recipe notebook when she got married during the Second World War, and added to it when she set up the home during rationing. The book has references to dried egg, a lot of margarine and things like ‘mock cream’. Austerity leaps from the sad little pages. She had little skill or experience, no money and no ingredients to inspire her. However, she learnt to cook over the years and I remember her food fondly. Not fashy, but made with care.

Ours was typical home fare – fll-you-up food. Because it was cold and we had no central heating, we were always hungry. There was no other way you could eat well, except to cook from scratch. Mum always had the radio on while she did housework, and loved Jimmy Young, who did the recipe slot on the radio. She had a hunger for education and she liked cookery books. Like a lot of housewives, her routine was quite strict. I remember as a child being so excited to go downstairs to see what cakes had been made for the weekend. There might be scones, biscuits and Victoria sandwiches, or – one of my favourites – her coconut tart, made with homemade jam and pastry.

When ready-made food came into the shops, my mum was one of the frst to buy it. She referred to Vesta ready meals as ‘the new meat’ – if technology had provided it, it must be good. In hindsight, she was already being sucked into the commercial messages we are surrounded by today.

I was a home economist teacher and food writer for many years. It was the appreciation of quality that I inherited from my mum. My grandma’s homemade pastry was made with lard. It was grey. Her turkeys were cremated. She made her own brawn and bought broken biscuits from the local market that were all crumbled and soft. She just didn’t connect with food. I could detect the contrast between my grandma’s pastry and my mum’s pastry from a very young age.

Thrift was at the heart of everything, and every time I wash a polythene bag, I think of my mum, who did the same. My daughter Jennifer has picked up the habit too.

I enjoy the companionship of the WI. I think mum would have liked it, but her life was too busy. Running a home in those days was hard work. Like so many women of her generation, she was short changed. I wish she had lived long enough for me to make her feel special. I love her recipe book because it’s a tatty, working document. It’s not an heirloom, it’s something she used. Mum scrimped on everything. So when I make her oat biscuits, I remember how lucky I am.

‘There was no other way you could eat well, except to cook from scratch’

n Historian Lucy Worsley

marks the centenary of the Women’s Institute in a special documentary coming soon on BBC Two.

n To find out how to join your local WI, and

for more information about the centenary

celebrations, visit thewi.org.uk.

Kathy’s Oat biscuits

EASY

MAKES 16 PREP 15 mins COOK 15 mins

85g/3oz softened butter, plus extra for greasing 85g/3oz golden caster sugar 2 tbsp golden syrup 1/4 tsp bicarbonate of soda 100g/4oz rolled oats 85g/3oz plain four 1/2 tsp ground ginger

1 Heat oven to 180C/160C fan/gas 4. Beat the butter and sugar together in a bowl until light and fuffy. Mix the golden syrup with 1 tbsp hot water to loosen it. Beat the syrup into the butter mixture. 2 In a separate bowl, mix together the remaining dry ingredients, then add to the butter and mix well with a wooden spoon until you have a soft dough. 3 Lightly grease 1 large or 2 small baking sheets with butter. Divide the dough into 16 balls and put them on the baking sheet, leaving plenty of room to spread. Bake for 12-15 mins until golden brown. Leave to cool on the baking sheet for 5 mins, then transfer to a wire rack to cool completely.

PER BISCUIT energy 111 kcals • fat 5g • saturates 3g • carbs 15g • sugars 7g • fibre 1g • protein 2g • salt 0.1g

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