Fifteen years ago at Jamie Oliver’s Fifteen

In February 2010, Jamie Oliver's Fifteen London, invited Real Bread Campaign co-ordinator Chris Young to spend two nights of National Apprenticeship Week alongside the raining restaurant's bakers.

The initiative was to help mark the official announcement of the restaurant's first in-house Real Bread baker, Kenny Rankin, drafted in from Fifteen Cornwall.

Fifteen years on, we are re-publishing Chris's blog posts from the exepriance. 

The bakerer's apprentice

8 February 2010

"Here, Chris – get yer nose into this.”
“Squeeze that.”
“Feel how this is gassing up already.”

Within minutes of arriving on the last Tube to Old Street for the first night of my mini-apprenticeship at Fifteen London, head baker Kenny Rankin had me smelling and touching everything.

Though it’s been over a decade since I’d been anywhere near a restaurant kitchen, it was all very familiar.  After a wade through the health and safety bible and a grand tour of the fire exits, I was back in the twilight world where Joy Division blares out from a battered stereo and non-stop ribbing between the crew belies mutual reliance and respect.

“I want you to get yer hands on as many of these breads tonight as you can,” said Kenny.  He threw me two lumps of white dough that, assuming I didn’t mess things up, were destined to become muffin-like oven bottom cakes.  Along with his right hand man, Stewart Bowen, Kenny then showed Salvo Licciardello - who was joining us from the front of house team to learn about the bakery - and I how to shape both at once.

The purpose of repeated prodding became apparent immediately upon feeling the difference between the original shapeless lump of dough and one of the glossy, taught spheres we’d created.

“People don’t realise how clever their hands are but after not long of doing that over and over again, you won’t have to think about it because they’ll remember for you.”

For now, the window in which Kenny and Stewart have to bake is very short. For example, after dinner service on this particular Friday, it was after midnight before the chefs had cleared enough of the kitchen to allow the bakers to start mixing up. From then, the four of us had only until around six thirty to make from scratch all of the loaves, flatbreads and pancakes for both the restaurant and trattoria; on most nights, the bakers work as a pair or even solo. 

Despite the time-pressure and unpredictable kitchen temperatures that required constant re-jigging of their to-do list, Kenny and Stewart remained fully-focussed on their two apprentices.  They showed us the different handling required by the each of Fifteen’s range of Italian and English breads, giving Salvo and I continual reassurance that we were on the right track. 

As dawn passed, I became aware that I was losing focus and asking the same questions more than once but Kenny simply demonstrated again. “I don’t hold with this idea that the only way you can teach someone to be a good chef is by yelling and calling them a t**t, “he explained.  “Treat people with respect and they’re more likely to put their heart into it.” 

By the time the breakfast chefs arrived to begin their prep, we’d produced eighteen loaves of ciabatta, enough for a few hundred portions each of two different focaccias, a mountain of piadinas, dozens of breakfast muffins, four triple-sized white bloomers, half a dozen or so barm breads and sticky malt loaves, plus a bucket of pancake batter for good measure.  And that’s not to mention mixing up the bigas and overnight sponges that would give the next day’s loaves their characteristic depth of flavour, refreshing sourdough starters and recycling leftover loaf ends as the breadcrumb coating for arancini.

I collapsed into bed at nine a.m. exhausted but looking forward to night two.

Crumb together

I’m a tea drinker but having managed only a few hours’ sleep during the day, the coffee Kenny passed me as I arrived for Saturday’s night shift was unusually welcome. 

As we began to set up, Kenny and I chatted about his plans for Fifteen London’s bakery.  Until last year, the restaurant had bought their bread in.  It was having seen – and tasted - what Kenny was up to with the apprentices at Fifteen Cornwall, that London executive head chef, Andrew Parkinson, realised what he was missing. 

Though being prised away from his beloved daily surf was a wrench, Kenny’s enthusiasm for the opportunity he now has is infectious.  Reeling off the specials planned for the rest of the year, the field trips he’s working on for his team, the ideas he has for linking in with other local organisations and bakers around the city, Kenny rarely pauses for breath.  In all of this, what really seemed to excite him the most was that, of the three sections in which Fifteen’s apprentices can choose to specialise, so many of this year’s intake had picked bakery. “They’re a good bunch of kids and it’s gonna be great, man.  You should come back.”

Overnight (well, day) I’d forgotten half of what I’d been shown but Kenny and Stu weren’t fazed, they just showed me again and repeated that over time, things would start to stick.  Even now on just my second shift, this was the case with moulding and shaping the muffins, which had begun to feel familiar and comfortable actions.

Though adeptness at coaxing the traditional form and crumb structure out of unbelievably slack ciabatta dough is some way off for me, slathering and massaging ladles of rosemary oil into acres of focaccia was effortlessly therapeutic.

As it looked like time and oven space would not be as tight as the previous night, Kenny decided there’d be chance for Salvo and I to try our hands at an enriched bread.  Working from a basic flour, milk, egg, sugar and butter dough recipe, Kenny gave Salvo and I suggestions for fillings and forms, then told us to get stuck in.  The resulting pecan and cinnamon buns from Salvo and my walnut and cardamom loaf looked and smelled amazing.

Though my days in professional kitchens – which I must stress didn’t amount to much more than holiday jobs on pot wash – are behind me, after two days at Fifteen, I cannot help but envy the apprentices who’ll be getting the opportunity of Kenny and Stewart’s demystifying grounding in traditional craft baking.