Ella

I am pleased to report that Ella's artisan bakery is still up and running in Ashburton - and visible on gmaps, although the man from google clearly went by on a Monday when she is not usually open. With her skeletal web site being at reference 1 and my first notice probably being that at reference 2.

So far we have taken white bread, brown bread and a spiral version of a cinnamon bun, all very good. The white bread being a rare treat - being more or less unobtainable in Epsom and certainly unbakeable by myself - only managing to have mastered wholemeal - and the cinnamon buns doing without most of the sugar that the Chelsea buns which they somewhat resemble usually come with. Which we find an improvement.

And this morning I noticed that they were using a very natty bit of commercial stationary, not seen before. A spiral bound booklet with each page being a paper version of an Excel worksheet, with a page for each baking day, with the columns being the various products and the rows being the various orders for that day. It struck me as being an excellent way for a business of this sort to manage its affairs, probably a lot more suitable than the electrical version which I might have used in similar circumstances.

Perhaps you learn about such things in cookery school. The sort of thing also which the print shop which we used to have on West Hill in Epsom would have knocked up quite nicely - and I dare say that there are such places in Devon, if not in Ashbuton itself. Commercial stationers & printers being pretty much a thing of the past.

PS 1: I associate now to the giant working sheets on which the mainly middle-aged female staff of the Population Estimates Unit of the General Register Office used to work up the population estimates for the 1,366 local authorities which then made up England and Wales. Working sheets which were written up in pencil before being copied over in ink, after checking. Working sheets which were displaced by electrical versions not long after my departure from the scene. Probably now done in Excel.

PS 2: the only other Ella that I have come across over the years was a colleague at the Treasury, a lady from Hong Kong whose husband was, I think, something to do with submarines, something to do with the land of meat & potato pies, that is to say Barrow-in-Furness.

Reference 1: http://www.ellaartisanbaker.co.uk/.

Reference 2: http://psmv2.blogspot.co.uk/2015/04/gastronomic-affairs.html.