The nation’s appetite for sourdough shot up in lockdown and shows no sign of slowing. Velvet meets three local bakers making a name for artisanal loaves

Elsie May’s

When customers at St Neots café Elsie May’s started asking for loaves of bread to take home, boss Naomi Rose took it as a sign. A hit crowdfunding campaign later, she cut the ribbon on a sister bakery - which won Britain’s Best Loaf for its farmhouse white within just three months

Gallery1

"Sourdough has always been our best-seller, but we’re also known for our tin loaves, like the farmhouse white and granary, and our flavoured focaccias of the week - this week it’s ricotta, mushroom and spinach, which I have to say is pretty good! Then, when it gets to the weekend, you've got the cinnamon buns, the chocolate buns, the cruffins - cruffins are a cross between a croissant and a muffin; they’re just sugary, buttery joy. . .

We’re open five days a week, baking every day. I’ve always loved baking bread; way before I opened Elsie May’s in 2018, back in my previous life, I did a few bread-making courses. During the first lockdown, my team and I took the time to think about what we did and didn’t want to do going forward - and what I really wanted to do was bake bread.

During the following year, when we were doing the open-close hokey cokey, I started making bread just for the café. Then we started doing the odd loaf to order, because people were asking. . . and it just went from there. St Neots was missing an artisan bakery, but I thought: ‘Why don’t we do a crowdfunding campaign? That way we’ll really know if people want it or not.’ Only 1 in 4 crowdfunding campaigns are successful, so I knew it would prove whether there was a real demand.

Gallery1

By November we’d exceeded our crowdfunding target of £15,000: 307 people pledged a total of £17,000 between them. We offered bread subscriptions as a pledge reward. There's a range of options - granary, white, sourdough - and they’ve been really successful; people love popping in each week to collect their subscription loaves.

We opened mid-January and straight away had so much support. In March, I noticed the NEC was running a Britain’s Best Loaf competition and decided to enter our team; at worst, I thought it would be a nice day out. But Elsie May’s white farmhouse won! And we were so close with our sourdough, too: in the end we were third and it came down to there being slightly too much flour on the top, it was that tight. So within three months of opening the bakery the team had won a national award.

I come from a family of home cooks but Elsie May, my grandmother, was the one who helped teach me to bake, hence the name of the business. We’d bake cakes and biscuits together and when I went to her house for tea we’d have pancakes or Welsh rarebit, which we now have on our menu here. I grew up in the country and you either ate everything on the plate or the leftovers were turned into something else - it was very much zero-waste!

Gallery1

That’s something else we’ve carried on at Elsie May’s. We do ‘too good to go’: if there's any bread left over at the end of the day, people can pick up a 'magic bag' of whatever’s left, and some also gets collected for a community fridge, open to people who might be struggling in the current times.

In terms of next steps, hopefully we’ll be able to supply other local independents before too long. We’re also looking at producing a sourdough panettone for Christmas and how we can do nationwide delivery for our scones and cakes as well as bread. . . We’re well known for our scone of the week in the café. We are on cherry and coconut this week and, as I’ve been doing a bit of a forage on my way into work the last couple of days, a blackberry and apple one will be coming soon. So a monthly scone subscription may be the way to go!"

* Housed in the 1920s Bedfordshire, Cambridgeshire and Huntingdonshire Electricity Company Showroom, Elsie May’s Electric Lounge Cafe, Bar & Bakery is at 58, Market Square, St Neots. See elsiemays.co.uk and call (01480) 472683.

Pastim Artisan Bakery

Coming from a family of bakers, Reme Puchades was born to make bread. Known for a wide range of signature bakes, from sourdough and seeded tin loaves to croissants, carrot cake and chocolate tart, she sells both direct from her Milton bakery and via local indie retailers, including city delicatessen Meadows

Gallery1

"Baking bread is a family tradition. I was born into it and, as I’ve grown older, it’s become something rooted really deep inside me. There’s a genuine satisfaction in making something from scratch. Plus, when you bake bread, there is a very special process happening; just learning this ancient skill, that converts a grain into something delicious, is worth all the hard work.

We are Spanish and, though bread is similar everywhere, the way people eat it makes such a difference. We have a bread called the 'coca amb sal', which is broadly the same as focaccia, and is very popular in my town. The memory of my grandmother making this bread early every morning to sell in our family bakery transports me back in time.

Gallery1

My favourite bread? I’d say the baguette; it’s the simplest bread and at the same time the most difficult to bake perfectly. We eat them as a ‘bocadillo’, aka Spanish sandwich, filled with ham and tomatoes.

The true passion and experience we bring to the business is what makes it unique. Both those things are reflected in our products. We also take great care in sourcing our ingredients: our flour is milled in Oxfordshire and everything else - eggs, grains, nuts - comes from suppliers as local to us as possible.

Gallery1

Over the last few years, bread has gone back to being baked as it was years ago, using original and local ingredients; using sourdough starter and no yeast; and respecting the process - doing it slow, no rush. I think this is only going to continue going forward, because people have discovered the great flavours and textures of real bread and started to appreciate them, which is great.

The best part of the job is, without doubt, the feedback from our customers. Seeing their smiles when they check out at the shop really fills our souls."

* Pastim Artisan Bakery is at Unit 3, Newclose Farm, Butt Lane, Milton, Cambridge. See pastim-cambridge-bakery.square.site, follow @pastim_cambridge on Instagram and email pastimcambridgebakery@gmail.com

WebbSour

Inspired by the breads he grew up with in Belgrade - artisanal country loaves made and sold daily on every street corner - Cordon Bleu chef Andrija Pujaz founded his own baking business, WebbSour in Elsworth. Since launch in 2020, WebbSour has become famed for its sourdough, supplied via shops, cafes and local doorstep delivery

Gallery1

"Bread is the soul of any bakery. It is the baker’s business card; their signature. You can bake numerous amounts of pastries and products, but the one that reaches cult status among truly passionate bakers remains a great sourdough. In my opinion, bread is the only food that satisfies completely all by itself: it nourishes the body, charms your senses and delights your soul. However I still recommend a good butter or an olive oil dip to accompany it!

I grew up in Belgrade, a city where you’d find a good bakery at every corner. So the bread I was used to as a young child was a naturally leavened, country loaf, shared at the morning table with the family and accompanied by a good yoghurt. Unfortunately, this has changed with time, along with the consumerism boom, and I’m sad to witness this shift. People have come to associate bread with a cheap, unhealthy product. The good news is that, thanks to the hard work of associations and artisan bakers, more and more people are giving up on those ballooned loaves full of additives and sugar, and returning to real, artisanal bread. Our mission is to join these bakers and help people in making healthier choices.

Our focus on people makes us unique, I think: they are the engine that keeps us running, from customers to staff. With people in mind we are committed to source the best ingredients, keep the traditional methods of natural leavening and never compromise on quality... All these elements lead to what we aim for: a highly nutritious bread of exceptional taste. Yet we are still babies! We keep improving, diversifying and learning, every day. But we are determined and won’t stop until our name becomes synonymous with excellence.

It may sound crazy, but I find the challenge to build something from nothing every single day extremely satisfying. There are no two days alike in the bakery. You arrive at the earliest hours in the morning and start on intense work from humble ingredients. Then you witness how these elements turn into a living thing that rises or dies in front of you... All at such a fast pace that you don’t even realise when it’s night or day.

Gallery1

We buy our flour from Prior’s, the windmill north of Cambridge, and our products are found at various outlets: Coton Orchard Garden Centre, LO’s Cafe in Brampton, Houghton and Wyton Community Shop in Houghton, The Old Bridge Hotel in Huntingdon, to name but a few.

In terms of trends, the next big thing is going beyond organic, I believe. Now the focus is on diversity. The more diverse the better. We offer flavoured bread at the moment, because it is not only tastier but it is healthier, and the next step is to include botanical blends in our baking.

For me personally, you can’t beat a plain country sourdough, with a thick crust and a light chewy crumb, served fresh from the oven with plentiful butter. So delicious!"

* WebbSour is at The Avenue Business Park, Elsworth, Cambridge. See webbsour.com and email info@webbsour.com.