What is care? On one hand, it reveals a certain attention, a spontaneous care that touches the smallest details of things. On the other hand, it is a pure manifestation of a deep urgency to which our instinct is called to respond almost obsessively. Overall, it is a human gesture, an exercise that Naomi Blair Gould already practices at 3 in the morning in her micro bakery, Seasons, in Mile End (London), at her own home, in a typical London house, a small terraced villa that Walt Disney seems to have been inspired by for the film “101 Dalmatians“. Naomi is a British citizen, but she spent her childhood in Lucca, from which she owes her delicate Etruscan accent that at times slips into a sweet Anglo-Saxon slang. She chose to study photography at university, but in London, where she returned and stayed to capture an unexpected snapshot of her life.
Naomi: “I have been vegan for 14 years now, I made this choice just before leaving Italy. I still remember my dad’s words: ‘if you want to do this extreme thing, you do it yourself.’ I had to learn to cook to survive and not just eat pasta with tomato sauce.”
The embryo of Seasons was already forming. Naomi started cooking for herself, then for her London flatmates and for customers of some restaurants in the city, never getting close to the pastry world that she neither liked nor felt she belonged to. Appointed as head chef, like many other colleagues in the field, in the spring of 2020 she had her homestay, waiting to return to work. But it was precisely during that period, which was the common denominator of our uncertainties, that Naomi paid attention to some interests that she may have never noticed before. Naomi:
“During the lockdown, I became passionate about pastry, but especially about leavening, about bread. I started making sourdough, reading a lot of cooking books, consulting with chefs online. And I realized that it was necessary to understand the science behind it.”
It’s science. When you start to understand that the priority lies in the ingredients and that everything can vary: from the time spent mixing or kneading, to the temperature of your hands (and the pH of your skin) and that of the water you use. Apart from perfection, there is no other goal. Naomi’s micro bakery, equipped with a professional oven, marks the first step of a thoughtful project that looks after the individual and their satisfaction.
Naomi: “I don’t want to draw attention to the word ‘vegan’. I would like my products to be appreciated for what they are, without revealing their true nature, without having to say that they are completely plant-based.”
The project is called Season, not Veggy Bread, Vegan Bakery, or Veg-Shop. It has nothing to do with a reductive term like “vegan”, but also aims to touch on the plant sphere, specifically seasonal, in a broader sense. Season’s seasonality includes spring ingredients rather than autumnal ones – for example, for filling focaccias – but above all seeks to convey seasonality by supporting small local productions with the same philosophy, drawing from them for some raw materials (such as the vegetable feta used for the Babka). However, let’s not confuse a 100% plant-based line with a proposal that follows the trends of 100% vegan and 100% gluten-free. No. It all starts with flavor, so if regular flour, or spelt flour, isn’t as “healthy” as gluten-free flour, it doesn’t matter, taste comes first.
Naomi: “I became a pastry chef in London, starting to work part-time at Pophams‘ bakery, downgrading myself from the position of head chef I was, driven by the desire to learn the basics in a high-level context. Transitioning from chef to baker gives you the opportunity to change your way of thinking, but at the same time to approach pastry and the oven with a chef’s eye.”
Pophams is a renowned bakery, but like most similar businesses in London, it has chosen not to open its doors to the plant-based world. This limitation is one that Naomi had to navigate, as she couldn’t taste anything in-store to create new recipes. She developed a heightened awareness of her craft solely through her sense of smell, redeeming the opportunity to intercept the most subtle nuances of pastry art. For now, Seasons is slowly rising in Naomi’s living room, where she delivers her products herself within a few kilometers of her home on Thursday mornings (her day off) aboard her bicycle. For those who wish, there is the option to order online filled focaccias and sandwiches, as well as sweet babkas (with saffron, cardamom, and vanilla) and savory ones (with tomato, harissa, and plant-based feta) directly on the preceding Wednesday.
Naomi: “Plant-based cooking is very vast, it gives the opportunity to delve into worlds like fermentation, something that in pastry making and bread baking, on the other hand, has not been fully explored, without a real reason. That’s why Seasons could open a new landscape here in London.”
And the packaging equally demonstrates a plant-based vocation, composed 100% of seaweed and therefore super compostable. This is a choice that undoubtedly has a higher cost, for both Naomi herself and those who choose to purchase, but it also has a positive impact on the planet and the image that Naomi wants Seasons to embody over time. Time must indeed become your friend when you dedicate yourself to leavening. So much so that perhaps a product should be coded in hours, not in calories. Knowing that it takes half an hour to make the dough, an hour for proofing, more time for shaping, an hour and a half for baking (and for the poolish alone, it takes 12 hours of fermentation) makes us aware of the effort and energy hidden in every gesture. Mixed flours, plant-based butter, international spices, raw materials sourced from local farms, and so much, so much time.
These are the ingredients of Seasons, Naomi’s small bonsai that is slowly taking root to grow healthy and strong.
