Holly brings slice of solace to Seil
Seil’s Holly Wesley is bringing a ‘pizza’ solace to the island with her new business venture.
Pubs are shut and Saturday night socials are banned but the 23-year-old, who grew up on Seil, has returned from running a sweet-bakery in Glasgow to take over a woodfired venture at Ardencaple and give neighbouring residents something to look forward to.
Holly, who has been busy fine-tuning bread recipes ready to supply restaurants, cafes and shops around the area, has now come up with a great way of comfort feeding islanders staying at home during the coronavirus outbreak.
She has called it Solace Bakery and to bring back weekend treats, Holly put out a Facebook message offering a Saturday night pizza delivery service – much to islanders’ joy. ‘Whenever family or friends from Seil came to visit me in Glasgow and help me out at my bakery, I always thought how lovely it was, so when Sally Knight, who used to have the wood-fired bakery on the island, contacted me to see if I was interested in taking it over, I said yes! Wood-fired ovens are not great for raising cakes so I thought I’d make bread to deliver to restaurants and businesses around Oban and Seil, but coronavirus has made that route difficult for now.
‘Because I grew up on Seil I really wanted to do something to serve the community to try to make this hard time a little bit easier so I came up with the idea of making weekend pizzas. More treats might follow.
‘I want to do everything I can to make it work. I had hoped to start the bread business next month but for now it’s pizzas,’ said Holly.
Good news for pizza fans is that Holly has just had a delivery of flour and her supplier hopes to keep it coming.
The wood-fired oven she will be using was built from scratch about three years ago.
She continued: ‘The pizzas will be ordered in advance with me and will be delivered house to house safely following strict food guidelines. I’ll ring when they are leaving the bakery!
‘I know there will be some people out there who are struggling or worrying about making ends meets at the moment so if people private message me on Facebook I’ll be happy to work something out – I don’t want anyone to miss out.’
To help keep families at home busy, Holly is also supplying homemade pizza dough for DIY delights.