It’s a story of depression and recovery. It’s a memoir by a daughter and father team. It’s a book about how baking brought a seriously depressed child back into the world with the hands-on help of her father and the support of her family and community.
Breadsong,evocatively named for the crackling sound made by a freshly cooked loaf as it cools, is written by Kitty and Al Tait, who live in the small market town of Watlington in Oxfordshire.
It starts in 2018 when Kitty was 14 years old.
“I was very much a people-pleaser growing up,” she says. “I was the youngest of three, the very happy, bubbly one, but when I was around 13 or 14, I started to struggle with anxiety and found the school day really, really hard.
"I didn’t want to tell anyone - I didn’t want to worry them - so I just pretended and put on this act and then one day it all just shattered and I couldn't go through the motions anymore.”
Al documents this time in Breadsong through a parent’s eyes: the acute bewilderment of seeing a bright, chatty child turn into someone who is overcome by despair, the difficulty in trying to get through the day, the huge impact on family life.
Unable to cope, Kitty left school.
“I had nothing to do and the whole family was trying to distract me from what was in my head. Then I made a loaf of bread with my dad and I fell in love with the process. It’s like magic the way those four simple ingredients turn into bread.”
That bread was Al’s adaptation of an easy no-knead bread - the miracle overnight white bread that is the first recipe in the book.
It’s a bread that’s so good, so nourishing, and so simple that it does indeed feel miraculous when you pull it out of the oven.
It’s hard to believe that Kitty, now 18, was once profoundly depressed when we chat on the phone on a Tuesday morning while she works at the bakery, simultaneously kneading focaccia and stirring crème pâtissière. Halfway through the call, she hops into the car with her dad Al, who joins in on the interview as they travel to the next town, the three of us managing to navigate a chat through coverage black spots.
What was it that appealed so much to Kitty about that first loaf?
“It was safe and warm and comforting,” she says. “I started to bake myself and learned everything from books and YouTube.”
Eventually, she found the courage to visit other bakeries, a difficult, often painful, process Al describes vividly in the book.
“I also started an Instagram account - the bread community is a lovely community, a world outside my own, so that helped with anxiety.”
With a new routine to cling to, Kitty was baking obsessively, making more and more bread, even using neighbours’ ovens at one stage. She started giving loaves away, set up a subscription service and weekly pop-ups, then opened the Orange Bakery in Watlington, which she and Al crowdfunded.
“We had no money - just £200 from pop-ups. We thought we would never raise enough but we hit the target within 48 hours. I think Dad's heart sank.
“We opened the bakery just after my 15th birthday. It was eight months from me baking my first loaf to opening a bakery.”
Breadsong charts the journey, the baking and the corresponding improvements in Kitty’s mental health, but it wasn’t all straightforward. Al, a former teacher, had to leave the world he knew and face the unknown with Kitty who, despite her illness, had a propulsive power behind her when it came to bread.
“I’m a bit of a jumper,” she acknowledges, “so I make that jump and Dad makes sure that I don't fall - I do love working with him.”
For Al, becoming a baker was a new calling and a side effect of trying to manage a situation - Kitty’s depression - where he and his wife Katie did not know what to do.
He had many misgivings about Kitty leaving education at such a young age but she is adamant that it was the best thing.
“I didn’t think twice about it because we didn’t have a choice. First, I wasn’t able to go to school - and then I was running a bakery and couldn’t go to school. I love learning and I’m constantly learning but you don’t have to do all your learning before you’re 18.”
Writing the book for Kitty was, initially, “difficult and scary to go back and then it was very cathartic."
Al also found the process of writing the book helpful: "It's easy to almost draw a line under a particular period of time and it’s all the same colour - grey - from start to finish. When you look back you do see a lot of greys, and some black, but a lot of colours as well.”
Now he and Kitty are on a mission to get good bread out into the world, and Breadsong, an inspirational book that will appeal to those with depression, the people who care for them and anyone who wants to bake, shows how you can do it for yourself.
There are 80 recipes, from simple pittas and their famous marmite-infused comfort loaf to maple, bacon and pecan buns and cauliflower cheese tarts, with instructions for potential bakers of every experience level.
Kitty feels that the whole experience of making bread by hand is beneficial on many different levels. If you’re not feeling well mentally, it helps you to “feel better because you’re being productive".
"You’ve also got the price side. It’s so cheap - it doesn’t cost much to make dough and it’s a really affordable way of entertaining yourself, involving fun and skill.”
Al agrees: “I don't want to malign sliced white loaf but when you’re making bread, it’s fantastic, the difference in taste. It’s a different species.”
With an understanding of the difference that bread and baking have made to their world - Breadsong’s subtitle is “How baking changed our lives” - the Taits have launched a not-for-profit initiative called Kitty’s Kits.
“I want to train up the next generation of bakers,” says Kitty, who has put together a free breadmaking kit for schools to teach children how to make bread. “We want to get as many people baking as possible."
- Kitty and Al Tait will be speaking at Food on the Edge, a two-day symposium on the future of food, which takes place at Airfield Estate, Dundrum in Dublin on October 17 and 18. More information and tickets are available at foodontheedge.ie.
- You can follow Kitty Tait’s adventures in bread at @kittytaitbaker on Instagram and at www.kittyskits.co.uk
- Breadsong: How Baking Changed Our Lives by Kitty and Al Tait is out now.
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