Hello,

This is the weekly newsletter from Loaf in Stirchley, keeping you abreast of our bakery and, once we can re-open it, our cookery school.

This week we introduce our charity for this quarter, ASIRT, and respond to the lifting of pandemic restrictions from Monday.

But first, if you would like to pre-order your bread and pastries for the coming week, our website is now open.

We have plenty of bread and pastries on the shelves too, with lunches served from noon on weekdays. Scroll down for this week’s lunch menu.

Our opening hours are:
Wednesday: 12-4
Thusday: 12-6
Friday: 12-4
Saturday: 9-1

The Breadlines

🥖 Molly’s making raspberry financiers next week, and the blondie will be peanut butter, blueberry and banana.

🥖 Specials this Saturday are spiced date and oat white sourdough and black pepper seeded rye sourdough. No reservations – first come, first served!

🥖 The second episode of the Landed podcast is out and it’s really good.

🥖 The Active Wellbeing Society, who facilitated the massive Brumtogether food bank last year, wrote a lovely article about us.

🥖 Our trip to Field Bakery in Somerset on Tuesday was amazing. We learned so much and came back exhausted and inspired. Looking forward to telling you all about it!

Team Loaf in a field at Field Bakery.

Statement on the lifting of pandemic restrictions

As you will know, from Monday 19th many government restrictions will be lifted and businesses and individuals will have to make their own decisions on how to deal with the pandemic.

We have decided to keep going as we have done with no changes.

We will continue to serve from the door and, while we cannot legally enforce a mask rule, we strongly request that you wear one when visiting us and continue to socially distance in the queue.

This is to protect the health of our customers and ourselves, and to ensure that we are able to keep trading.

Thank you.

Introducing ASIRT

This quarter we are raising money for ASIRT, the Asylum Support and Immigration Resource Team. Based in Birmingham ASIRT is a small charity that provides legal support and representation to asylum seekers and other undocumented migrants in the West Midlands.

You may know them from their Paddington tote bags.

We provide immigration support, ensuring that our clients can access whatever they are entitled to, whilst we try and regularise their immigration status. We are a team of eight staff members, and occasional volunteers, and social work students on placement. A lot of the unrestricted funding that we raise goes into our hardship fund, which is composed of small grants that we give out to clients who are in immediate financial need for things like food, nappies, electricity etc.

As well as immigration advisers, we also employ a children's worker, who provides activities and support around things like access to schools etc. Many of our clients have no recourse to public funds, and are living in very vulnerable circumstances.

It makes a real difference to organisations like ASIRT to get support from the community. Thank you very much

We’ll be writing more about ASIRT soon in this newsletter. If you’d like to make a donation, you can do so with your online pre-order or at the counter.

And if you have a suggestion for next quarter's charity, please let us know!

Lunches this week

This week's sourdough pizza is summer squash, rocket, ricotta and mozzarella (V) on sale Wed to Fri.

The soup pot will be serving the following with a slice of sourdough bread:
Wed: Tarka daal curry (Ve).
Fri: Mushroom and aubergine curry (Ve).

Thursday's focaccia sandwich is hummus, roast pepper, rocket & hazelnut dukkah (Ve) with optional feta cheese (V).

Savoury snacks include our famous sausage rolls and vegetable rolls, available all week, plus ham & cheese and walnut pesto & cheese croissants on Thursday and Friday.

Lunches are made fresh every day for 12 noon. Our menu for the week is on the website here.