Die wonder van brood is dat dit met eenvoudige bestandele soos meel, water en sout gemaak word en tog kan die wonderlikste, geurigste gebak uit hierdie eenvoud na vore kom.
Dít is beslis deel van Hester van der Walt se fassinasie met brood. Hierdie fassinasie het gelei tot die publikasie van ‘n boek, getiteld Hester se brood, wat broodresepte en vertellinge van Van der Walt se bakkery op McGregor bevat.
Van der Walt het gisteraand by die bekendstelling van die boek by die Book Lounge in Kaapstad gesê sy gebruik baie min suurdeeg vir haar brode. Dit is ook nie die tradisionele soetsuurdeeg nie, maar haar eie skepping. “’n Mens gebruik die minimum,” het sy gesê. “Dit is byna ‘n leuse vir my.” Sy was verbaas oor die resultate wat sy uit hierdie minimum kon kry.
Broodbak is ook ‘n metafoor vir die lewe, het Pieter Veldsman, bekroonde sjef en skrywer, by die bekendstelling gesê. “Dit gaan nie om den brode nie, maar om die brood van die lewe.” As ‘n mens tussen die lyne van Van der Walt se boek lees, gaan dit volgens hom oor “vriendskap, vennootskap en omgee”. Hy het die boek met potlood en liniaal gelees en het in ‘n “beswyming van bewondering” gegaan oor bekoorlike beskrywings soos: “druk kuiltjies in die deeg met jou vingerpunte”.
Van der Walt is nie ‘n opgeleide kok nie, maar het op besonderse brood verlief geraak nadat sy oorsee getoer het. Daarna het haar soeke na die perfekte ciabatta begin. “Ek het baie Italiaanse kookboeke gehad, maar daar was min broodresepte in, want in Italië is daar in elk geval ‘n bakkery om elke hoek en draai. Toe het ek self begin eksperimenteer.”
Aan die einde van haar beroep by die Mediese Navorsingsraad het sy en Lies Hoogendoorn, die illustreerder van Hester se brood, na McGregor verhuis. Aanvanklik het hulle ‘n koffiewinkel bedryf en dit is hier waar hulle vir Niel Jonker ontmoet het. Hy was besig om elders ‘n broodoond te bou en het aangebied om vir Van der Walt ook een te bou. Só is Van der Walt se broodoond, Hestia, gebore.
En Van der Walt het uiteindelik die volmaakte brood gebak. Daarvan kan die gaste, wat by die bekendstelling aan haar brood gesmul het, heelhartig getuig.
Dit is vir Die Book Lounge en Modjadji Books ‘n groot plesier om jou uit te nooi na die Kaapstadse bekendstelling van Hester se Brood deur Hester van der Walt.
Hester van der Walt sal ‘n gesprek voer met Peter Veldsman, restauranteur van die befaamde Emily’s by die Kloktoring in die Kaapse Waterfront, bekende skrywer, en internasionaal bekroonde chef.
Kom geniet saam met ons ʼn stukkie van Hester se heerlike brood en ʼn glasie Leopard’s Leap wyn, geborg deur Leopard’s Leap.
Hester van der Walt sal gesels oor die boek en daaruit voorlees.
Wow! What a launch we had in MacGregor on Wednesday night for Hester se Brood by Hester van der Walt. The owners of the Karoux restaurant, a fairly new MacGregor hot spot, know how to organise a fabulous party. Andre and Kurt are charming, efficient and warmly hospitable hosts. The evening was summery, the Karoo courtyard and fairy lights the perfect setting. Karoux had organised delicious local wines from the MacGregor Wine Farm. Their Colombard is the house white at Karoux and their Shiraz and Pinotage are prizewinners.
Hester specially made bread for the occasion, what a treat. She made foccaccia with delicious toppings and a huge celebratory challah with a chocolatey raisin filling that was so delicious I thought I’d died and gone to heaven after one bite. Positively orgasmic. I think I will have to learn how to make challah. Hester uses only Eureka stone ground flour for her breads.
As people came in they greeted Hester and Lies Hoogendoorn, her partner (whose art work is an integral part of the book, including the cover painting) enthusiastically. The guests bought copies of the books like ‘hot cakes’. Hester sat down to sign and before the more formal part of the proceedings were begun, we had almost sold out of books. I was also thrilled that Natascha Mostert, who did the book design and layout, came to the launch. Hester and Lies were thrilled to meet her and to thank her for her input and sensitive book design work.
The more formal proceedings started with me saying a few words about Modjaji Books and what I am trying to do with this small press. When I first met Hester and Lies to talk about the book, I got my Modjaji feeling, it is an electric lighting up inside of me feeling. While I read the manuscript, the feeling intensified. And during the launch I was afraid I might burst into ecstatic flames. Hester is a gifted writer and a wonderful person, calm, centred, loving, focused and many other things besides. Hester and Lies saw the printed book for the first time at about 3 in the afternoon. The launch was only a few hours later, the most thrilling for me was to see the way the took the book and looked and it and held and paged through it. I could see they loved it. Every now and then they would look a little choked up, a little misty-eyed.
Hester spoke, her is what she said:
It was not difficult to choose bread for tonight. It had to be foccacia. I have a clear memory of my first bite into the crust of its close relative, the ciabatta. I knew immediately that this was real bread – the crust rough and honest like our landscape and the inside crumb tasty and filled with large uneven holes. The ideal bread for breaking with your fingers and for soaking up sauce and for cleaning your plate.
I guess that was the beginning of my search: I wanted to make a perfect ciabatta! I paged through recipe books and I experimented, I waited with bated breath to take the bread from the oven. But then the first cut through the crust was a disappointment – this was not the real thing. Until one day, during a difficult time in my life, a time of burnout in my work, when I had no energy, I stumbled on a special book on artisan bread by Maggie Glezer. That was the start of my life with bread.
Hester se Brood tells the story of that search. I share the what and the why and the how of making real handmade bread in your own kitchen. I tell the story of the oven, the wood and the firemaker, the market, and of this village and its people who provided the womb for the story to grow.
Hester read from the first page of her book
‘n Mens kry brood — en Brood. Dis wat ek besef het toe ek vir die eerste keer in ‘n ciabatta gebyt het; daardie lugtige Italiaanse brood genaamd pantoffel: plat en eerlik met ‘n kors soos ‘n gehaarde landskap. Binne vol groot rysgate, ideaal om met jou vingers te skeur vir die opdoop van daardie laaste souserigheid uit jou boord.
Net daar het my soektog begin, ‘n Geblaai deur resepteboeke het my van die een boekwinkel na die ander geneem. Halfskelm maak ek myself staan by ‘n tafel vol boeke, ‘n resepteboek oopgeslaan en notaboekie op my handsak gebalanseer. So skryf ek af. By die huis gaan probeer ek die resep uit. Wag in spanning vir die brood om uit die oond te kom. H’m, lyk nie sleg nie. Maar die eerste sny deur die kors weet ek al: dis nie wat ek soek nie. dit lyk soos die tuisgebakte brood van my kinderdae, die soort wat net lekker is omdat dit nog halfwarm uit die oond is.
Colleen Crawford Cousins my friend and collaborater also spoke about the book. Hester and Lies are old friends of hers, and right from the start she too saw Hester’s book. She advised me on cover design and book design. She saw that the book is about making bread, but it is also and perhaps more importantly about making a handmade life and Hester chose to write it in Afrikaans as an act of reclamation of her mother tongue. I wished Hester had read for much longer when she read us two tantalising paragraphs.
Niel Jonker, who helped Hester and Lies to build their wood fired oven came specially to the launch with his family. He also spoke about his involvement with the oven, becoming a baker of bread and of his friendship with Hester and Lies.
Oh and a charming little detail: Colleen and I stayed at the MacGregor Wine Farm Cottages – the entrance to which says “Ina Naude en man”. There has to be a story there.
Hester se Brood, by Hester van der Walt will be launched at the Karoux restaurant in the charming village of McGregor on Wednesday evening, December 9th. Guests will meet Hester van der Walt, the author, and Lies Hoogendoorn, her partner and the cover artist and illustrator. You will be treated to delicious local wines, breads and other delicioushnesses.
Please RSVP to Colleen at cdhiggs AT gmail.com or 0727743546 by the 4th December.
Here is the blurb of the book:
Hester se Brood is gesetel in ’n dorpie in die Klein Karoo, waar Hester van der Walt brood in ’n houtbakoond vir die plaaslike mark bak. Soos twee groot geeste van weleer, C. Louis Leipoldt en Martin Versveld, het sy ’n diepgewortelde, intuïtiewe aanvoeling vir die konneksie tussen siel en kos; veral kos wat met sorg, volgens tradisionele beginsels en metodes, voorberei word. Saam met gulhartige porsies sielskos, verskaf hierdie eerlike (en heerlike) plat-op-die-aarde boek ook resepte wat jou gaan wys hoe om klasieke Europese brode, soos ciabatta, focaccia, kitke en baguettes te bak, asook plaaslike gustelinge, soos outydse soetsuurdeegbrood.
’n Fyn sin vir humor, en ’n groot waardering vir die magiese spel tussen vuur en hout, graan en sout, water en gis en tyd – die basiese elemente wat nodig is om goeie brood te bak – maak hierdie boek net so onweerstaanbaar soos die reuk van brood, kraakvars uit die oond.
The publication of Hester se Brood was made possible by a grant from the Hiemstra Trust.
Modjaji Books is proud to announce the publication of Hester se Brood by Hester van der Walt.
This gorgeous book will be out in the first week of December, if you pay now you will get an 18% discount on your signed copy – that is you will pay R155. The book will sell in stores for R190. The book is a wonderful exploration of a handmade life and the preoccupations of the author, Hester van der Walt, in particular her journeying into bread making and moving to and making her new home in McGregor. The book is beautifully designed by Natasha Mostert, cover lettering by Hannah Morris, and Hester’s partner, Lies Hoogendoorn’s delightful drawings enhance the text and give a visual sense of life in McGregor. Lies also did the painting which was used for the cover design.
More about the Book:
Hester se Brood is gesetel in ’n dorpie in die Klein Karoo, waar Hester van der Walt brood in ’n houtbakoond vir die plaaslike mark bak. Soos twee groot geeste van weleer, C. Louis Leipoldt en Martin Versveld, het sy ’n diepgewortelde, intuïtiewe aanvoeling vir die konneksie tussen siel en kos; veral kos wat met sorg, volgens tradisionele beginsels en metodes, voorberei word. Saam met gulhartige porsies sielskos, verskaf hierdie eerlike (en heerlike) plat-op-die-aarde boek ook resepte wat jou gaan wys hoe om klasieke Europese brode, soos ciabatta, focaccia, kitke en baguettes te bak, asook plaaslike gustelinge, soos outydse soetsuurdeegbrood.
’n Fyn sin vir humor, en ’n groot waardering vir die magiese spel tussen vuur en hout, graan en sout, water en gis en tyd – die basiese elemente wat nodig is om goeie brood te bak – maak hierdie boek net so onweerstaanbaar soos die reuk van brood, kraakvars uit die oond.
The publication of the book was made possible by a grant from the Hiemstra Trust.
Please feel free to pass this special offer on to friends and colleagues. The offer is only available until the 27th November 2009. Please email me to place an order and let me know how many copies you are ordering and your postal address.
Modjaji Books Banking details: Modjaji Books CC FNB * Adderley Street Branch * 201409 Cheque Account * Account Number 62148917646 Use your Surname as a reference when you make the payment online
Yesterday, I got an email from Jane Henshall at the British Council, letting me know that Malika Ndlovu, author ofInvisble Earthquake has been chosen by the SA Focus Steering Committee to participate in the London Book Fair next year. This follows closely on the heels of hearing that Modjaji Books received one of the 10 places for smaller, independent publishers. All of this is enormously thrilling, and underlies my sense that it was right to start Modjaji Books; there is a place for a small press focusing on the writing of Southern African women.
Jelly Dog Days – Erica Emdon Whiplash – Tracey Farren (short-listed for the 2009 Sunday Times Prize) Counting Sleeping Beauties – Hazel Frankel Little Ice Cream Boy – Jacques Pauw
WISER will host a discussion among four authors who have recently published novels.The panellists will engage their novels, each of which deals with a version of dysfunctional domesticity, family implosion and in two, how this has impacted on the adults who emerge. Whiplash and the Little Ice Cream Boy tell the stories of grown-up protagonists from fractured working-class worlds, while Jelly Dog Days that of a young girl who attempts to navigate her way out of a similarly bleak background. In Counting Sleeping Beauties an awful family tragedy is related, which threatens to destroy the neat, tidy suburban world of a middle-class, Jewish family.
The discussion will focus on the themes of marginality within, and the hidden interiority of, families, while also considering certain aspects of the craft of writing, such as the challenges of representing domestic drama, the demands of sustaining first-person narratives, questions of voice, and the ethics of representing disruptive and prospective violence. The writers will also comment on their sense of the particularities of South African domestic histories.
Date: 8 October 2009 Venue: WISER Seminar Room, 6th Floor, Richard Ward Building, University of the Witwatersrand Time: 18:00-19:30
At last Whiplash face out in an Exclusive Books - Dec 2008
As a new small publisher, Modjaji Books, I have found the internet invaluable in meeting some of the difficulties and challenges that I face. Creating a name for the company, limited resources, unknown authors, new titles, being outside of the mainstream of publishing and the book world are a few of the challenges.
Ben Williams of Book SA has kindly let me host a micro-site for Modjaji Books within the Book SA site. As a fledgling publisher I aim to make small resources stretch as far as they will go. I know In the future I plan to develop a Modjaji Books website as well, where I can list my books, sell them even, but for now, which has been almost two years, http://modjaji.book.co.za is a good place to be. The blog is an excellent forum to post reviews, news, questions, and information. Because of the blog I have received wonderful letters from possible new authors and people in Book development in other African countries.
I have used the internet to maximise Modjaji’s presence online and to multiply the effect of any PR that my books have received. For example, any time there is a review or an honour for one of my books such as Tracey Farren’s Whiplash being shortlisted for the Sunday Times Award and getting a White Ribbon Award from the Women Demand Dignity advocacy group or Megan Hall winning the Ingrid Jonker prize for Fourth Child – I blog about it on Book SA, and then I put the link to the blog onto my Facebook profile and I paste it to the Modjaji Books group on Facebook. I also Twitter about things I want to publicise like events at the Cape Town Book Fair.
The other bloggers on Book SA act as a kind of support group, most of them are writers. I am a writer and publisher. I see that most publishers don’t blog on Book SA themselves, they use Book SA for PR. Louis Greenberg (who was at Exclusive Books when I wrote the article) is also an author, who blogs on Book SA – he kindly sent me the Exclusive’s Homebru call for submissions for 2009. I found out about them last year, but somehow slipped off the mailing list. I was delighted to be able to submit Whiplash for consideration, it was ‘long-listed’, which means that all the Exclusive Books managers will be looking at Whiplash as a serious contender for Homebru. Sadly it wasn’t selected, but a great many more managers will be aware of Whiplash.
Although I’ve been fairly successful in generating awareness of my authors and their books, I don’t have the resources to market directly to booksellers to the extent that I might like. I did use Bookmark to advertise Whiplash towards the end of last year and I use a distributor. But unfortunately for Modjaji Books my distributor sells over 200 other books, so their reps don’t focus on my books in the way that I would like them to. Direct communication with bookstore staff and managers is a key challenge and one that I haven’t been able to overcome yet. I hear that managers are overwhelmed with emails, so that is not necessarily a good route to go. I wish I could get bookstore managers to visit the Book SA site regularly. The internet doesn’t solve the problem of meeting managers personally and developing a relationship. If anyone has ideas about how to meet this challenge I would love to hear about them.
The internet is also useful for doing research, finding out about trends, authors, issues, making valuable connections with people, sending out information about calls for submissions. Once every couple of weeks I search for reviews of Modjaji’s books for example, I recently came across the African Writing Online review of Megan Hall’s Fourth Child.
Facebook is a useful place to publicise reviews, news, new books, prizes, events. Modjaji Books has a Facebook group of 259 at last count and it continues to grow. I post all my blog entries onto my Facebook group. In January this year I used Facebook, BookSA and direct emailing to advertise the Modjaji Subscription Offer. In this way I have been able to build up a modest cash reserve to offset some of the production costs of my books in advance. The discounts which one has to pay to one’s distributor and to bookshops, and VAT on production costs even when one isn’t VAT registered make the margins very narrow for a small publisher. So doing some direct selling is hugely helpful as here the margins are much higher.
As a new small publisher I have had to think creatively how to make my books visible and to be patient. For example, I published Megan Hall’s book in October 2007, she wanted the book out before she had her baby, due towards the end of November. I knew she wouldn’t be up for major PR, but it was good to launch the book and Modjaji Books. In August 2008 she won the Ingrid Jonker prize for Fourth Child and after that the PR was intense, and then she got invited to Poetry Africa in Durban when her baby girl was almost one. Megan has also now been invited to be on the Poetry International website.
So in summary, I use the internet to build networks, to pass on useful information, to share information and ideas and to ask for favours where necessary. Essentially I see it as a two way street – an opportunity to build up awareness amongst the book buying public and amongst the industry about Modjaji titles and authors, but also a wonderful opportunity to pool resources and to learn, connect and work with others.
In June 2009, Bookmark – local Bookseller’s magazine A slightly older version of this article – the brief asked me to write about how I use the internet as a small independent publisher. I wrote the article in January 2009 and the publication was delayed till now. I’ve just updated the article where necessary for re-publication here.
Modjaji Books is going to be at the 2009 Cape Town Book Fair, big time for a small publisher. We’ll be there sharing a stand with LiveWriting in the Small Publishers’ Pavilion. And we’re also hosting in a back-room rental sort of way, Wordsetc.
Modjaji is hosting two events, both will be on the floor at the Fair, in the DALRO space.
We had hoped to have a third event – brief readings from the forthcoming BED anthology, but this is not to be. It was only possible given all the constraints to offer two events.
Malika Ndlovu will read from her extraordinary book, Invisible Earthquake. Malika is a highly professional performer and she has a beautiful voice, so hearing her perform/ read from this work about the process of grieving for her stillborn baby girl is quite incredible and moving. I’ve heard her read from this work many times and each time am more moved than the last time. Her reading/performance is on Monday 15th June at 14h00.
Four new poetry books are to be launched at the Fair, all four of the poets will be there and will read from their new work. Sunday 14th at 5.30 pm at the DALRO space. Seating is limited – only 60 seats and if the FACEBOOK reservations are anything to go by – there will be some pressure on space.
The four new books are: Joan Metelerkamp’s, Burnt Offering; Helen Moffet’s new book, Sindiwe Magona’s collection called Please, Take Photographs and Fiona Zerbst’s fourth collection of poems, Oleander. What a vivid and wonderful array of new books and amazing poets.
Die wonder van brood is dat dit met eenvoudige bestandele soos meel, water en sout gemaak word en tog kan die wonderlikste, geurigste gebak uit hierdie eenvoud na vore kom.
Modjaji Books is proud to announce the publication of Hester se Brood by Hester van der Walt.
