Great bread, great food and great atmosphere

The Bakery, on Mullingar's Dominick Street, has brought to Mullingar something unique, a bakery selling direct to the public; a restaurant and café that serves the bakery and patisserie products made by the bakers and pâtissiers as well as, obviously, full breakfast and lunch menus - and coming next, specialist home-made chocolate - and the launch of a mail order side to the business as well.The arrival of The Bakery has put paid to the complaint that there hasn't been a good batch loaf seen in Mullingar since Mullally's closed down."Every day we do fresh batches, we do turnovers, brown bread - made with my father's own brown bread recipe - and a couple of other 'mainstay' breads," says Bobby, a trained baker and sugarcraft specialist, who opened the business with partner, Daiva Stanionyte, whose background is also in catering."But every day as well, we have other, different breads as well - spelt bread, for those who are wheat intolerant; a couple of types of rye bread, we have white soda breads, bloomers, cobbs, high Glycaemic Index (GI) multi-seed bread, we do a tomato and herb bread, a cranberry and rosemary…"He has just introduced a range of gluten-free bread and "The Bakery" also has a gluten-free menu.Also on the shelves from this week is a delicious brown treacle bread - a sort of sweeter version of the traditional Irish brown bread. There are a couple of others as well, but what's been proving hugely popular is the traditional Irish brown, made to the recipe devised by Bobby's father, who has been thirty years in the trade - and from whom Bobby first learnt the rudiments of baking.It wasn't a surprise to Bobby that the fresh breads began selling like…well, hot cakes… what was a surprise to himself and Daiva however, was the fact that they have also ended up flat out replenishing the patisserie counters, which have a most gorgeous array of cup cakes, tartlets, buns, cookies, cakes - all beautifully finished and decorated."From 10 am in the morning 'til lunchtime, it's mainly pastries, cheesecakes, coffee cakes, and carrot cakes. On Saturday last, we had to refill the cabinets five times," he reveals.Specialist cakesThe Bakery takes orders for special occasion cakes - and nothing is too complicated when it comes to the icing, since they even have a machine that reproduces photographs or corporate logos, and "prints" them onto thin sheets of icing - ideal for a 21st, or a wedding anniversary cake, which can feature a picture of the birthday person as a baby, or the couple on their wedding day.Wedding cakes are another area in which The Bakery specialises. "But we take care not just of baking and icing the cake - but also of delivering it and setting it up," says Bobby, explaining that because wedding cake icing is so intricate, and so delicate, neither he nor Daiva would be happy unless they had one of their own staff on hand to oversee the delivery and arrangement of the cake at the wedding venue.ChocolateFor those whose passion is chocolate, beware: The Bakery's next step is the introduction of its own chocolates, made with the best of Belgian chocolate. Allied to that, Bobby and Daiva are about to launch a web business, through which customers will be able to order giftwrapped deliveries of chocolates, cookie jars, muffins - with next day delivery promised.