The Courtyard in Shantinagar describes itself as a culture project. The large building with a glass facade emphasises on creating community. The space has been host to artists, filmmakers, poets, architects and more.
It is also home to the Courtyard Food Project, which is an effort to celebrate food, community, people and stories as Nuhar Bansal, the events manager, explains.
“The biggest initaive within this would be the all-day Courtyard Food Festival, which happens every six months. We also do a curated sit-down dinners every month, where we collaborate with different chefs from the city. There is no restriction of cuisine or genres,” she says.
Their latest offering unde the project is the Sunday Bake Sale,which kicked off yesterday. The bake sale is intended to be smaller and more intimate than the festival. The latter runs for an entire day with over 20 stalls, while the event on Sunday had three stalls and went on from 11 am to 3 pm.
“The space is meant for the baking community in the city to showcase their work. We look out for home bakers and stay away from established brands and individuals,” says Nuhar. For the first edition, they reached out to home bakers who had earlier expressed an interest in being a part of the food project. However, Nuhar says that from next time they’d be putting out an open call.
“Since it’s a smaller and more experimental place, the bakers don’t have to bring their fastest moving items. They can bring out stuff they want to get feedback on as the crowd here is generally open to trying out everything,” she says.
They hope to have such sales, once or twice every month depending on the response.
The three bakers at the event were all new to the bake sale space.
Marigold, run by Monisha Cardoso, ventured into selling her products last November and has been to three sales so far. She specialises in cakes and other desserts and has a soft corner towards cakes with Indian flavours.
Shikha Jain of Fluff Bakes began baking as a hobby but was encouraged by her family and friends to sell her goods. This is her first bake sale. She was selling cupcakes and jar cakes.
The third, Sapa, is run by a baker from Mysuru. German native, Dina Weber, came to India in 2015 and travelled across the country working in bakeries. It was around that time she was introduced to sourdough bread.
“I used to make it for myself at home, then for friends in Mysuru and slowly people started asking me to make bread for them and teach them how to do it, which is when I started Sapa,” she says. She has been teaching bread making classes for the past year but only ventured into the bake sale space six months ago.