For the past two years, Christopher Brown has been capturing the essence of our bakeries and their neighbourhoods in his signature linocut prints. We asked Christopher our baker’s dozen of questions to find out more about our friend behind the ink.
1. What time did you get up this morning?
I’m always awake at 5 and usually up by 6. Then, I like to enjoy the quiet of the morning before going for my daily swim.
2. How do you take your coffee?
I usually have a latte, but sometimes a flat white.
3. What do you usually have for breakfast?
In the winter I love GAIL’s porridge and in the summer, it’s usually fruit and a yoghurt drink. If I feel I deserve it, I will have a pain aux raisin with my coffee, post swim.
4. How do you and GAIL’s know each other?
We met back in 2016 and bonded over our loves of London, art and cake.
5. What’s the first food you remember loving as a child?
Toast. But also licking the bowl when my mother was making cakes – to me it was a heavenly treat.
6. Have you ever baked bread? How did that go?
Once, and not a great success – it was like a brick!
7. What does the smell of freshly baked bread remind you of?
I always imagine a happy woman with a starched apron, and traces of flour on her face.
8. What do you spread on your toast?
Marmalade. Always.
9. For us, bread is the fundamental thing. What’s fundamental for you?
Lino. Nearly all my work is made using it.
10. What’s in your ultimate sandwich?
I do love cheese and pickle, but roast beef and horseradish is a favourite and reminds me of my childhood. We always had them on a Sunday if my mother cooked a joint.
11. If we could give you a lifetime supply of anything we make, what would that be?
That’s a difficult question. GAIL’s bread is delicious; I could consume a whole loaf. The carrot cake is heaven, too.
12. We work with three primary ingredients. Six if you include time. What are the main ingredients in your life and work, concrete or abstract?
Hand, eye, mind and humour.
13. What would you do for a living if not this?
I have no regrets about my choice of profession, though as a little boy I wanted to be a history don at Oxford. I would, in a fantasy world, have loved to have been a first class competitive swimmer (then I could have eaten GAIL’s cakes every day).