THERE HAS BEEN a resurgence of local bakeries in the past few years, thankfully due to the fact that we are shopping locally more, supporting Irish producers, and choosing to go for quality as better value than poorer quality alternatives.

Scéal Bakery is a Dublin-based micro bakery that began its life in Glasnevin and has since moved to the Spade Enterprise Centre in Smithfield.

The bakery is the baby of Shane Palmer and Charlotte Leonard Kane, which they started together in 2016, but the idea has been a long time in the making.

“We met on our first day of college. We studied Culinary Arts together in DIT and they still do that thing where they put you sitting together in alphabetical order. It was alphabetical luck!” Shane told me.

I cut my finger on the first day of our kitchen lecture and Charlotte burst into a fit of the giggles and stuck a plaster on it.

“The idea for Scéal came about when we were living and working in San Francisco. We always talked about the idea of setting up a little bakery in Dublin, it wasn’t until San Francisco that we realised that we could really do this,” Shane explained.

“San Francisco helped shape us into the bakers we are today,” said Charlotte.

The name came from Shane choosing some cheesy names like ‘the loaf story’ – thankfully that got axed and we whittled it down to Scéal. It encompasses the story of how we met, our journey to becoming bakers, where we’ve been and what we’ve learnt along the way.

“Everything we make at Scéal is from scratch. We make 100% sourdough using a culture of wild yeast and bacteria,” Charlotte explains.

Shane’s ‘mother’ is over six years old now, quite young in baking terms, but just as lively. The long, slow fermentation process of our sourdough and croissants means one of the most important steps in what we make is time.

Both Shane and Charlotte trained as chefs first, so that flare for creativity comes through in their baked goods, says Charlotte:

Each item is designed in a similar way as a dish would be in a restaurant or café. Once a week we sit down and chat about the initial concept, what’s in season at the moment, what’s at it’s best, textures, the layers of flavour and then the subtle background hints that take people by surprise.

“Charlotte takes the majority of photos; our Instagram Stories are a joint effort though,” says Shane.

Our days in the bakery are long and busy, so whenever one of us gets a chance we’ll take a snap or a short clip to add to our daily story. We usually try squeeze it in the evening time or just before weekend market to give a gentle reminder to our customers of where we’ll be.

 Scéal Bakery’s Instagram account @scealbakery is full of mouth-wateringly tasty treats and fantastic photography, as is Shane’s account @countrybornandbread.