Using organic ingredients, traditional complete fermentation methods and hand-crafted techniques. The only machinery used in processing the doughs is a mixer and an oven. The baker’s skill and judgment ascertain when the dough is ready to progress through the various stages of the bread-making process, and all portioning and moulding (shaping) is by hand.

We use Dove’s Farm of Hungerford to mill our organic flour. Essential Trading of Bristol supplies other organic ingredients. Sea salt is the only salt used, and NO ADDITIVES ARE USED WHATSOEVER. We do not hold Organic Certification because, in our experience, the burden of paperwork is too much for a two-shop high street bakery business such as ours.

The Process

Please note that the Organic Certification is no protection against the industrial style short-process fermentation (or lack of fermentation) that is the norm in supermarket bought bread. The reason is that the antioxidant ‘Ascorbic acid’ is permitted in certified organic bread. Ascorbic acid is not harmful in itself. It is also known as vitamin C. We use some of it ourselves in our ‘Craft’ range, but its primary purpose is to reduce the fermentation time and speed up the processing, thus reducing cost. This is not what we wish to do with our ‘Classic’ bread, where we aim to produce good, wholesome, healthy bread using age-old techniques.

Our Artisan Bread range is processed using the same ethos as our Classic range, but the flour, seeds and other ingredients may not be Organic. Our artisan bread is fully fermented under controlled conditions, using traditional British and European methods to produce bread of real character and with great flavour. Most of them are ‘oven-bottom baked’ (stone-baked), sea salt is the only salt used, and we will not use any additives whatsoever.

This range encompasses everything that is not Classic or Artisan. We make craft bread with non-organic flour and ingredients, including ascorbic acid. The permitted limit for ascorbic acid in bread is at a maximum rate of 200ppm, but we would typically use about 1/4 of this. We no longer use emulsifiers in any of our bread and do not use L-cysteine.

Our Craft Baked bread aims to produce good quality bread with character using all the skills of a professional baker. Most of these bread will incorporate pre-dough or sourdough ferments for added texture and flavour, and many are slow fermentation products.