WORK • Wednesday Routine
TOM MOLNAR • co-founder and CEO • GAIL’s
Neighbourhood you live & work in: Camden
It’s Wednesday morning. What’s the scene at your workplace?
I walk or skateboard to Hawley Wharf, which is our main hub with offices, our training academy and our bread lab – my first port of call. This is a sort of incubator, where I find our master baker Anomarel experimenting with different flours, hydration levels, milling methods and fermentation times on his eternal quest for better bread. Recently, he’s developed our heritage grain sourdough, crispbreads and shortbread with regenerative grain grown by 10 partner-farmers, using agroecological methods. Rather than dictate to farmers what grain to grow, we asked them to grow what their soil needs, and we created a recipe based on the yield.
I use lunch to catch up with people, whether it’s someone on the team who needs feedback on a new initiative, or someone from the industry I want to exchange ideas with. In the afternoon, I’ll head to our mother bakery in Hendon and catch up with the bakers. Even after 20 years, every day brings new challenges – hot weather might change the fermentation process, for example. I’ll have a go at shaping a loaf but they tend to have to reshape it after. I don’t have the craft baking skills they do!
What’s on the agenda for today?
I’m spending a couple of hours with our creative director, asking ourselves how to better tell the stories behind our food. We work with a community of small, craft suppliers and we need to shine a bit more light on them. In May, the team headed to The Bull at Charlbury to celebrate the launch of our Bruern Farms sourdough, which is made with wheat grown and milled on Bruern Farms in Oxfordshire. It’s completely unique to be able to buy a loaf that’s fully traceable to one farm, and it’s a project I’m really excited about. We worked with their chef to devise a menu that included the loaf in each course – the dessert was a treacle tart made with breadcrumbs.
Any restaurant plans today, tonight, this weekend?
I’ll be heading to Barrafina. It’s one of those places I keep going back to – the buzz at the counter, the smell of prawns hitting the plancha, a cold glass of wine in hand. It just gets everything right.
How about a little leisure or culture?
My weekend ritual is to head out early to get the papers and some pastries. I’ll visit a couple of GAIL’s, of course. If I’m going downhill, I’ll skate, and uphill, I’ll probably cycle. Once I get back, I’ll make a coffee with my V60 and read the FT Weekend or the Observer until my family wake up (I’ve got teenagers!). There’s always an interminable stack of books on my kitchen table.
In the afternoon we’ll head out for a walk, maybe catch a museum. I really enjoyed the SOIL exhibition at Somerset House.
Any weekend getaways?
There is such an exciting food scene in the UK, and I’m drawn especially to the West Country. I often head to Shipton Mill – over the years of working with them, I’ve become very good friends with its founder, John Lister. It’s set in the most beautiful countryside, on an idyllic little brook.
I’ll pop into the craft bakeries in Bristol or Bath (there are more each time I visit, which is great to see). My latest discovery is Rova Editions, an independent print shop on the Christmas Steps in Bristol. I was excited to see them stocking our own magazine, Companion. If I’m not staying with John, I’ll book in at one of The Pig hotels.