The Prince & the Duchess join us today in our Bakehouse

Royal visit to The School of Artisan Food

the courtyard before there arrival - official photos coming soon

A very exciting day today as we prepared to greet the Royal Party at 11.00am. Prince Charles arrived by Royal Train and the Duchess of Cornwall by helicopter landing in Carriage Court on the stunning rural grounds of the Welbeck Estate. As we shaped and moulded our traditional cottage loaves, I kept glancing through the windows of the bakery, finally catching a glimpse of the parade of black cars pulling into the courtyard and then full view of the Prince and Duchess. We eagerly awaited them to come through the bakery doors. Excitement growing, the doors flung open and our head baker greeted them with "Hi guys" :-)
Charles chatted to Laura my flat mate for quite some time about the cottage loaves we were making and then he came over with Camilla to speak to me. Very big grin! I bobbed slightly and shook Charles's hand with "Good morning Your Royal Highness" and "Hello Camilla" (having practised 'mam like ham' for quite some time!). My fellow student baker, David, bobbed a little further (almost a curtsey) and greeted Charles with 'Hello Your Majesty' :-)
Charles was really lovely and spent time with all of us, genuinely interested in what we were doing at the school. He asked me how we make our sourdoughs and the difference in fermentation times to commercial yeast. He seems to favour sourdough bread and I told him there was a hamper waiting for him filled with our walnut sourdough we had made yesterday and that it would go perfect with some local Stichelton blue cheese and stout. He said he would have loved to stay longer. Both Charles & Camilla wished us well and waved goodbye as they left....a special day :-)

The Royal loaves - traditional cottage loaves that we shaped during Charles & Camilla's visit to the Bakehouse