The Great Staffordshire Breakfast

So while I sat last week eating my brunch - a delicious plate full of bacon, eggs, sausage tomatoes and mushrooms with a good cup of tea, (I was being spoiled in return for washing up duty) I overheard a couple next door who had also partaken of a great Staffordshire all day breakfast commenting to Peter that is was the best breakfast they had enjoyed. I glowed with pride and then began to think. So what made it better than any other breakfast?

Was it the fact that the bacon, cooked gently in the pan, tasting ever so slightly of crisp porky sizzle and salt complimented the creamy texture of the free range egg and the tart acidic soft texture of the tomato or was it the fact that it was presented beautifully on a large fine china Wedgwood plate and my cup of finest English tea brown enough to taste of tea but pale enough to be delicate was also in a lovely china tea cup... maybe it was as simple as the sunshine streaming through the window, bouncing off the floor making me feel warm whilst the dulcet sounds emanated from the CD player temporarily taking me far away from my pots and pans!


Now everybody likes a big, hearty English breakfast once in a while, don't they? Families sit at their tables on a Sunday morning and tuck in but I wonder do they know where the tradition really came from? why is the Full English Breakfast, so well... English?

I bet they don't know that the English breakfast first came in to our households as a marketing ploy, in the 1920’s, much the same as the red Santa Claus arrived via Coca Cola. ‘Bacon and eggs’ was the phrase used by Edward Bernays to persuade people that a good hearty breakfast after a relaxing lie in on a Sunday morning was just what they needed to start their ‘relaxing’ day off.
With the passage of time and significant advertising it became very popular to buy Edward Bernays bacon and eat it with lots of different things on a Sunday morning. The most popular were sausages, eggs, black pudding, mushrooms and tomatoes.

Further google research has also revealed that Henry V and his men ate a hearty breakfast before going out to battle. This included all manner of ingredients, some not so appetising such as uncooked cows kidneys with black pudding and bacon! Eggs were also eaten but as they were harder to come by they must have been a bit of a treat and I guess in those days an impending axe crashing through your armour kind of obliterated the worry of cholesterol!

More recently in 2002 the BBC reported the death of the Great British Breakfast claiming foreign muesli's and french croissants to be at fault, however reports from a small rural village in Staffordshire can confidently claim that the Staffordshire all day breakfast is definitely not deceased but growing in popularity. So why not pop down to the Gastronomy Shop and enjoy a moment of pure deliciousness with Staffordshire bacon and eggs but definitely no raw cows kidneys and let us know what you think - Are the days of bacon and eggs a thing of the past...

Going from strength to strength - History of The Gastronomy Shop

Peter and I decided to open The Gastronomy Shop nearly two and a half years ago. Having decided that our outside catering company had out grown our kitchen at home we looked for premises. After much searching and planning we found the shop - previously known as 'Greens'.

The original plan was to convert the shop floor area into a large commercial catering kitchen and keep the small room as a meeting area for our clients to visit us - Somewhere to sit with a nice coffee to discuss their dreams for their weddings and special parties .

However with a different hat on I had been working with many local food producers and understood that many of them struggled to find a route to market. It occurred to me that as 9 High Street has a great shop window and Gnosall is the largest village in England ( lots of people) - what better than to create a business with a double edged sword and open it up as a delicatessen.

Armed with this idea we set about converting the back half of the ground floor of the building into our kitchen so that we could create wonderful home cooked food for weddings and corporate lunches etc, and the front half as The Gastronomy Shop - stocking local cheeses from Shropshire and Staffordshire, local Sausages from Market Drayton, Delicious pork pies, smoked goods from Alan at Bings Heath and Peters own home made breads and cakes.

It was very important to us to keep the integrity of the building - we have been told that its the oldest shop in the village and we really didn't want to cover up its charm with modern trappings. However we didn't want it to be old fashioned either so we chose the decor very carefully and invested lots of time restoring the old oak floorboards.

The Shop opened on the 15 May 2007 Since then the range of products and local producers who supply to us has developed and grown so that different and seasonal foods are always changing on the shelves.

Before Christmas when the economic downturn really began to bite we had to take a good look at the business and rather than sit back, moan and allow things to overwhelm us we decided to be positive and be creative. We attended lots of food fairs and Christmas shows in the festive run up and even won a prize at The English Winter Fair for our stall. We decided that if customers weren't going to find us we would find them! We also decided to change what had previously been our store room come office into an extension of the small coffee area and so the Meeting Room was launched on the 17th January this year.

With the help of Angela Smith, a talented local jeweller we opened the doors on the 17th with the goal of inviting villagers to come along, sample Angela's Jewellery making workshops and hopefully buy a cup of Aroma Coffee. It was a great success and more people venture into the cafe each week to discover that local and home made food is not any more expensive than mass produced and imported food, that our shop is really relaxed, friendly and inviting and that we don't mind if you sit with a whole pot of tea and read the Newspaper for as long as you like.

Now appraoching our second year we are so proud of the community feel that has grown amongst our loyal customers and we choose to count many of them as friends now.

So If you are visiting Staffordshire and fancy a really good cuppa pop in and see us... We might even tempt you to a slice of Peters coffee and walnut cake or a Staffordshire cream tea.