My little bakery had become very popular with the yachties and ex-pats, not so much the locals with all that brown flour nonsense going on! Bequians either made their own bread or bought the “penny breads” from the mainland and they were not yet customers. The whole wheat bread, while good, was dense and heavy and not their cup of tea.
We were selling everything we made, and although it was hard work I was enjoying the challenge. As money came in I was able to buy ingredients for baked goods other than just bread and cinnamon buns, and “The Joy of Cooking” became my bible. We weren’t calling our restaurant “Mac’s Pizzeria” yet, what good is a pizzeria without pizza? Graham dubbed the bakery “Gracious Goodness” which I was glad was temporary!
I ran into a bit of a snag when it came to things I wanted to try, namely Graham and his intense aversion to white flour. Even though we used only special unbleached flour, Graham would not touch it until it had been blended with the bran and wheat germ. I wanted to try my hand at muffins and croissants, and they would be too heavy with the whole wheat mix we were using.
Graham had been a blessing to me, without him and his idea to make bread we would have been lost! However, we both realized that the Pizzeria was heading in a direction he wouldn’t be happy with and Graham slowly started to remove himself from the kitchen. By then I had hired someone to help with the dough kneading and Graham gracefully took a back seat. I missed his company in those early morning hours, but now I could happily shove my hands into some white flour!
I had sourced some molasses in Kingstown, it was used for the production of rum and I was able to purchase large jugs of it. Following a “Joy of Cooking” recipe I tried my hand at bran muffins and they were AWFUL. I was stirring the batter too much and they came out of the oven hard and tough. Practice made perfect, and soon I was making lovely fluffy muffins to sell alongside the bread and cinnamon buns.
It wasn’t long before people, arriving for baked goods, wanted to sit down and have them with butter, jam and coffee. They even wanted to be served!! The nerve of them!! Mac and I decided it was time to buy some plates, mugs and coffee and open for breakfast. We weren’t ready to start serving pizza (we still didn’t have a clue how to make one) but we could hire a waitress and start serving all these demanding people some coffee to go along with their muffins and cinnamon buns.