A sunny southeast bakery that has recently celebrated one year in business is seeing its self-sustainability goal begin to bear fruit. By working with the seasons, and using locally grown and sourced ingredients, they are also helping to reduce their carbon footprint on the environment.
Bread maker, Caitriona Keating and baker, Fergal Walsh own Dún Artisan Bakery in Dungarvan, Co. Waterford.
There, the couple hand-craft sourdough breads and pastries, made from local ingredients, as well as their own home-grown produce and foraged finds.
As well as focussing on creating delicious baked goods, the pair are equally determined to run their bakery sustainably, and with very low food miles attached, they said.
These goals have helped them to establish a bakery with a real point of difference, that offers customers a hyper-seasonal and provenance-led menu, they said.
This menu features a glut of their own homegrown summer fruits and berries, rhubarb, baby beetroot, rainbow chard, kale and many more, all of which are hand-picked in the evenings and at weekends with the help of their four young boys.
Baking with the seasons
Caitriona and Fergal’s passion for baking with the seasons, and reducing their carbon footprint as much as possible, is best demonstrated by the couple’s half-acre plot close to their home in Tramore, Co. Waterford.
Over the last five years, they have cultivated the land to establish their own crop of over 200 mature berry bushes.
This consists of black, red and white currants, summer and autumn raspberries, strawberries, black, red and green gooseberries, and around 10 different varieties of tayberries and loganberries.
The only fruit currently bought into the bakery from an outside supplier are blueberries, but by next summer Dún will be self-sufficient on this front too, with plans for 40 of their own blueberry bushes to be planted and fruiting by then, the couple said.
Their land is also home to a patch of wild garlic and 30 fruit trees, ranging from black cherries, figs, apples, and pears, to plums, peaches, quince, and black elder – all of which are showcased in their weekly specials menu.
No-dig system
These are all grown using the no dig system – which replicates the forest floor to provide a natural, healthy and undisturbed habitat for the underground ecosystem to thrive underneath – and without the use of additives or pesticides.
The only fertiliser used is well rotted compost and a seaweed fertiliser, which Caitriona and Fergal forage themselves locally.
Supporting local producers
As well as producing and baking with their own homegrown produce, Caitriona and Fergal use a combination of quality local, organic, and sustainable ingredients also.
The bakery’s location in Dungarvan has given them easy access to an “enviable roll call of artisan producers from the surrounding areas”, they said.
For instance, the pork used by Dún comes from Newbard Farm, located fewer than 30km away in Lismore, Co. Waterford, which pasture-raises Heritage Oxford Sandy & Black Tamworth pigs.
And Caitriona and Fergal reduce the food waste output in the bakery by feeding the lucky animals their leftover sourdough.
The raw organic milk that they use in their coffees and baking comes from John and Sheena O’Sullivan’s Ballymacoda Organic Farm, home to a small herd of endangered rare-breed Droimeann cows, and located fewer than 25 minutes away in Co. Cork.
Oak Forest Mills, which uses stone mills to preserve more nutrients and flavour in their flour, is just a 30-minute drive away in Piltown, Co. Kilkenny.
And, the butter – a key ingredient in their pastries – is supplied by Irish Gourmet Butter in Dunhill, Co. Waterford.
Commenting on the drive to become as self-sustainable as possible, Caitriona said:
“We may only be a small bakery doing little things to change the bigger picture, but that’s where it all starts, with personal culpability.
“We plan for the needs of the present while keeping one eye on the needs of the future. The field mouse is as important to us as the honeybee. Every season we see through, we are constantly considering the next year, suitable pollinators and organic principles to control what we choose to grow.
“We are doing our bit to combat biodiversity loss by working in harmony with nature to create a wild and wonderful habitat for the little things in our ecosystem that matter so much.”