Six to nine months before: set a date and a rough budget

You don't need to think about cake yet, but it helps to know two numbers: how many guests, and roughly what you want to spend. Our wedding cakes start at $420 for a three-tier buttercream cake that serves 60 to 70 at party-sized slices, or about 100 cut as finger slices. The custom cakes page has the full size and price table.

If your date is a Saturday in June, September or early October, get in touch now. We take a limited number of wedding cakes each weekend and those dates go first.

Three to six months before: book a tasting

Tastings run on Wednesday and Thursday afternoons and Saturdays at 2:00. It's $35 for two people, taken off the cake if you book with us. You'll try four sponges and three fillings, and spend about forty-five minutes with Priya talking through:

• How the cake will be served. Cut as dessert, or on a table for people to help themselves? That changes the size.
• Style. Smooth buttercream, semi-naked (the sides scraped back so the sponge shows through), textured, or fresh flowers. Bring pictures, including ones of things you don't want.
• Flavours for each tier. Tiers can be different. Chocolate stout on the bottom and lemon on top is our most requested pairing.
• Dietary needs. A gluten-free or vegan tier, or a separate small cake, is easy to plan now and hard to add later. Read our note on gluten-free baking before you decide.

Within two working days you get a quote and a sketch. A 50% deposit holds the date.

Two months before: sort out flowers and the stand

If you want fresh flowers on the cake, tell your florist now so they can set some aside, unsprayed, for us. We'll place them when we set up. We have a few cake stands you can borrow for free; if you want something particular, it needs to be at the venue by the morning of the wedding.

Three weeks before: final numbers and design

This is the last point to change sizes or flavours. We confirm the design, the delivery time and the venue contact, and the remaining balance is due 14 days before the day.

The week of the wedding

We bake the sponges three days ahead, fill and crumb-coat them two days ahead, and finish the cake the day before. On the morning, we deliver and set up within 25 miles for $75. Delivery and setup takes about 45 minutes. We leave a card with serving instructions for whoever is cutting it.

Short on time?

Getting married in less than three months? It's still worth asking. Weekday and winter weddings often have room, and a simpler two-tier cake (from $210, serving 30 to 35) can be done in three weeks. Email us with your date and headcount from the visit page, or call the shop.

What "GF" means on our menu

When an item on the menu has a GF tag, it means the recipe has no wheat, rye, barley or spelt in it, and the flours and starches we use are bought certified gluten-free. It does not mean the item is made in a gluten-free kitchen. We are a sourdough bakery. There is flour in the air from 3:30 in the morning.

So:

• If you avoid gluten by preference, or have a mild intolerance, our GF items are made for you, and most people in that position eat them happily.
• If you have celiac disease or a wheat allergy, we can't promise any item is safe. Some of our celiac customers buy the buckwheat loaf and are fine; some decide not to. That's your call to make, and we'd rather you made it with the facts.

What we bake without wheat

• Buckwheat & millet loaf, $11, Friday and Saturday only. Buckwheat, millet, brown rice flour and psyllium husk, raised with a separate rice-flour sourdough starter. It's a proper sour, chewy loaf, not a sponge. It toasts beautifully.
• Lemon polenta cake, $5.50 a slice. Made with cornmeal and ground almonds, so it's gluten-free but not nut-free.
• Flourless chocolate walnut cookies, $3.50. Egg whites, cocoa, walnuts. Crackly outside, fudgy inside.
• Custom cakes in gluten-free chocolate or vanilla sponge, for $10 more than the standard price. See custom cakes for sizes and lead times.

How we keep it apart

We can't make the kitchen gluten-free, but we can make the odds a lot better:

1. The gluten-free loaf is baked first. On Friday and Saturday, the buckwheat dough is mixed, shaped and baked before any wheat dough comes out of the retarder.
2. Separate everything we can. It has its own starter jar, mixing bowl, bannetons, scraper and cooling rack, all marked with yellow tape and stored on their own shelf.
3. Wiped-down benches and a clean oven deck. The deck is brushed and the loaves go in on parchment.
4. Wrapped at the bench. Gluten-free loaves and cookies are bagged as soon as they're cool and never sit loose in the bread shelves or the case.

Cross-contact can still happen. Flour is fine enough to settle anywhere, and we share one oven.

Vegan and nut-free, while we're here

The same honesty applies to other allergies. A VG tag means no milk, butter, eggs or honey in the recipe. An NF tag means no tree nuts or peanuts in the recipe, but we use almonds, walnuts and peanuts on the same benches, so we can't call anything nut-safe for a serious allergy. Every item on the menu lists what it contains, and the recipe cards live behind the counter: ask and we'll read you one.

Ask us

If you're planning a birthday for a kid who can't eat wheat, or a wedding with a vegan table, email us before you order and tell us exactly who the cake is for. We'll tell you what we can do and what we'd do in your place. The address and phone number are on the visit page.

What a starter is

A sourdough starter is flour and water that has been left to ferment until it's full of wild yeast and lactic acid bacteria. Bakers also call it a levain, a mother or a mother dough. The yeast makes the bread rise; the bacteria make it sour and help it keep. Commercial yeast does the first job faster, but it doesn't do the second at all.

A starter isn't magic, and it isn't fragile. It's a population of microbes that will keep going as long as you give it food and don't cook it. Twelve years just means twelve years of nobody forgetting.

The feeding routine

Maude is fed twice a day, every day, including the Mondays and Tuesdays when the shop is shut:

• 6:00 am and 6:00 pm. Twelve hours apart, so she peaks roughly when we need her.
• Ratio 1:5:5. One part ripe starter, five parts flour, five parts water, by weight. On a normal day that's 200 g of Maude, 1 kg of flour and 1 kg of water.
• Flour: half stone-milled bread flour, half whole rye, both from Ridgeline Mill. The rye is what keeps her lively; it carries more of the wild yeast and more for it to eat.
• Water at 80°F (27°C), because the bakehouse runs cool in winter.
• Everything else is discarded or goes into the bread. More on that below.

A high ratio like 1:5:5 means she takes longer to peak, around 10 to 12 hours, and ends up milder. Home bakers usually feed 1:1:1 and see a peak in four to six hours. Both are fine. Ours is set by the bake schedule, not by any rule.

How we know she's ready

Before the evening feed, Nell checks three things:

1. Height. A ripe starter has roughly tripled and just started to sink in the middle.
2. Smell. Sharp and yoghurty, a bit like green apples. If she smells of nail polish remover, she's hungry and we feed her sooner.
3. The float test, sometimes. A spoonful dropped in water should float. It isn't perfect, but on a cold morning it settles an argument.

Then the ripe starter goes into the next day's dough, and a small piece goes back into the jar to be fed again.

When the shop is closed

People assume starters need constant attention. They don't, but a bakery's does, because we need a lot of it and at a predictable time. On Mondays and Tuesdays whoever lives closest comes in at 6:00 and 6:00 to feed her. When all three of us went to a wedding in 2022, Maude went into the fridge for four days on a stiff feed (1:5:3.5, less water) and came back after two warm feeds.

If you're keeping a starter at home, the fridge is your friend. Feed it, give it an hour at room temperature, then refrigerate it and feed it once a week.

What happens to the discard

Every feed we remove more starter than we keep. Some of it goes straight into the day's rye dough. The rest used to go in the compost, which bothered everyone, so now:

• Tomás folds some into the ginger molasses cookies.
• We give away small jars of Maude on Sundays. Bring a clean jar with a lid and ask at the counter.
• The rest goes to a pig farmer two towns over. The pigs are, reportedly, very happy.

Taste the result

Maude is in the country sourdough, the seeded loaf, the rye, and the rye and walnut. The menu lists which days each is baked and what's in it. If you want to see her in person, come on a quiet weekday afternoon and ask; there's nearly always someone willing to lift the lid. There's more about Nell and the rest of us on the about page.