A neighbourhood bakery · corner of Elm & Rye
Everything here is flour, water, salt, and a sourdough starter old enough to have opinions. No yeast in packets, no shortcuts, no bread before its time.
Out of the oven
Three bakes a day. When a bake sells out, it's gone — the oven doesn't do encores.
Our house sourdough. Blistered crust, custardy crumb, mildly smug.
£4.80Rye and five seeds. Dense, dark, keeps for a week, votes sensibly.
£5.60Kalamatas folded in by hand, thyme from the yard, lunch sorted.
£6.20Twelve-month cheddar baked into the scoring. The corners are currency.
£6.80The school-run bake. Butter, cinnamon, cardamom, chaos.
£3.90Rosemary, flaky salt, indecent amounts of olive oil. Fridays only, obviously.
£5.20The mother herself
Every loaf in this bakery descends from one jar of starter, begun by Nan Iris in 1958 and fed twice a day ever since. She has outlived four ovens, two premises, and every fad diet. She dislikes cold snaps and being talked about in the third person.
“You don't knead dough into shape. You suggest, repeatedly, and at four in the morning it finally agrees.”
— Wren, head baker, feeding Agatha since 2009