Lucinda O'Sullivan's Ireland

Monday 15 April 2013

'I did corporate law in Galway before becoming a baker. It's a natural progression really," said Patrick Ryan with a laugh. Patrick, 27, set up the Firehouse, a bakery and bread school on Heir Island, west Cork, last year, and is about to embark on a new venture in the commercial world with a bakery, cafe and patisserie, the Firehouse, situated on the site of the old Delgany Inn in Co Wicklow which is due to open very shortly.

He and his partner, Laura Moore, have teamed up with Emma Stone and Sarah Reid, of the Romany Stone, and Jackie Spillane, to build a food destination over two floors, which will see not only the bakery but also a restaurant and food store.

"I was only 16 filling out my CAO form and I didn't know about corporate law – it sounded great so I did that. I spent some summers in Greece and ended up getting a job in a kitchen there, which I loved. The day I got excited about chopping parsley I think that was me pretty much done! I finished the corporate law degree and I moved across to GMIT (Galway Mayo Institute of Technology) where I did the two-year professional cookery course training to be a chef," says Peter.

Having come from the much bigger University of Galway, Ryan says he found GMIT a more personal environment where he had a great rapport with tutors and lecturers.

"It was through one of my lecturers that I got my shoe in the door of the Michelin-starred Thornton's restaurant for a trial. Kevin Thornton offered me a job so I was there for about 18 months. My first week there I was working with the pastry chef, she went downstairs to get sorbet, and I'm still waiting for her to come back, so I was thrown in at the deep end. I loved it there. It was great to be exposed to the best, it was a great foundation. The only reason I left was to go travelling," he explains.

Patrick says he did the usual backpacking thing for a year, working a bit in Australia. Perhaps fate did take a hand in Patrick's career change because it was on his travels that he met Duncan Glendinning, who also had a passion for bread.

"We were in Fiji taking part in this thing called Tribe Wanted. This guy had leased an island, as it were, and was working with a local tribe to make their living self-sustainable," he says.

Tribe Wanted is a sustainable tourism and social enterprise project which began on Vorovoro island in Fiji in 2006 and was handed back to the local community in October 2011. It was featured on TV. In 2010 Tribe Wanted began a second project in Obey in Sierra Leone, and this year opened a further project in a traditional Italian hamlet in Umbria. (See www.tribewanted.com.)

"You can go and chill out in a hammock, or get involved, whatever you want to do. When we were there we met two English guys. I think it was to get out of the hard labour aspect that I was hanging out with the women in the kitchen, but one of the days I was there I made bread and that's where I met Duncan – he loved the bread. I think he always had it in the back of his mind that he wanted to set up a bakery but he, in fact, was a web designer so he asked would I come and do the breads for him based in Bath. It was good timing really because I wasn't giving up a job, I was coming back from my year away. I went over to Bath for the weekend and stayed four years as head baker helping to set up The Thoughtful Bread Company and establish it as an award-winning artisan bakery, so that's where the bread side of it came from."

Ryan also starred in The Big Bread Experiment, a TV series, and published his first book Bread Revolution, co-written with Duncan Glendinning, which aimed to reintroduce people to the world of real bread and to get people baking again.

"I would be a self-taught baker really, trying it out, getting the seasoning right. Bread is great that way. You learn from getting it wrong. It's a bit like grown-up play dough. Guys take to it quite easily and generally women are better at the delicate fine stuff. My girlfriend Laura Moore was with me and she was working at Michael Caine's Michelin-starred Priory Hotel. We had met in GMIT where she had done hotel management and she had joined me in the latter part of our travels in Australia. After four years in Bath, it was a question of would we come home. Laura wanted to come back, so I came too, and that's how we ended up on Heir Island, as Laura's dad had a house down there. They have a sailing school there so that's what gave us the space and the opportunity to give it a go. Heir Island has been very good to us and the support we got locally was great. Delgany is going to be an actual bakery, whilst Heir Island will still be our bread school. It's a cool opportunity. Laura does the organisational side."

Ryan reflects on life's coincidences, as he recalls, whilst now living in Laois, his mum is from Wicklow and the old Delgany Inn is where his granny used to go. "There is a reason for it," he says. "There will be a restaurant upstairs, and underneath a sort of farmer's market feel, and the bakery will have road frontage. You can watch the bakers, see the oven. There will be seating for about 25 to 30 people so we will do good coffee, good pastries, bread and so on, really simple. By keeping it simple, you have nothing to hide behind, just quality produce."

Ryan wants it to be somewhere where people can go every day for value for money.

Bread, he says, appeals to everyone, no matter what age you are, what religion you are, what diet you are on; there is something for everyone.

"It's the simple things in life that people want. We are getting better at that, we have been subjected to the industrial loaf for too long, so we are going to do really good bread.

"The word 'artisan' is getting flashed around a bit like 'organic' was and it is giving people the perception that it has to be expensive and people can't afford it. I don't want that to happen. It's handmade bread made with passion. People are much more health-conscious and aware of what's in their food, which is great. We want people to sit there and watch what's going on with the bread," he explains.

"We want to make afternoon teas for everyone – comfort food with a touch of class. I think the recession will be the making of us really. We probably got a bit too big for our boots, even in terms of work, we almost got too arrogant, too good to do the little jobs; now we go back to what we are. With the horsemeat scandal, people are going back to their butchers. They are also going back to their bakers, back to the high street. People are more in touch with their food – it's great really. We need to learn to take time.

"Bread is much more than the makings of our sandwich, it is the king of the table. In Bath, we did a barter thing, if people brought their herbs in, we discounted their bread. We hope to do something like that in Delgany."

More meitheal.