Story
The bakery started in 2016 in a unit that had been a tyre fitter's, which is why the floor still slopes towards a drain in the middle of the room.
The first year we baked three things and sold them out of a hatch. The ovens came second-hand from a hotel kitchen that had closed; two of them still have the hotel's name stamped inside the door. They are slower to come up to heat than anything modern, and they hold that heat far better, which suits a long bake.
Why the list is short
A bakery this size has one useful decision to make each night: how much of each thing. Every extra product makes that decision worse. Six lines means we can mix by feel rather than by spreadsheet, and it means that if the rye is behaving oddly one week, somebody notices on the first loaf rather than the fortieth.
The shift
Mixing starts at four in the afternoon. Shaping is around eleven at night. The first loaves go in at five and the shop opens at half seven. Whoever is on nights goes home when the morning baker arrives, and the two of them overlap for about twenty minutes — long enough to say what the dough did.
We are occasionally asked whether we will open a second shop. The honest answer is that the second shop would need a second pair of bakers who care about the overnight ferment at two in the morning, and we have not met them yet.
Work
We take on one apprentice at a time, usually for eighteen months. If you want to learn to bake on nights and are prepared to be tired for a year, write and say so — not with a CV, just tell us what you have baked.