FLOUR POWER

Caroline Sellers, Side Oven Bakery, Foston on the Wolds @sideoven

I have always had an interest in baking. Then in 2003 I founded the Side Oven Bakery from our farmhouse kitchenwe grow high quality milling wheat on the farm and the idea was to be able to mill and bake with what we grow. Since moving to our custom built bakery we now make a wide range of artisan breads and croissants for our Farm & Bakery Open Days, made with Primitive and Ancient grains both grown and milled here on our family farm. And this summer we are also planning to open our pop up cafe on the farm!

Megan McSharry, Haxby Bakehouse, Haxby @yorkshire_loaf

Around 5 years ago was feeling unfulfilled in my career, quit my job and enrolled at Le Cordon Bleu on the Boulangerie diploma. I caught the bread bug and went on to study at The School of Artisan Food. I managed to walk straight into a head bakers position at Marmadukes in Sheffield and have now relocated back to York where I am at Haxby Bakehouse. It has always been a dream of mine to work here with Phil and the team - we work hard and make great bread, it’s the best job I’ve ever had. Baking makes me happy and I want the bread to make others happy - there’s nothing nicer than a freshly baked loaf of sourdough with loads of butter!

Sally Cunningham, Forge Bakehouse, Sheffield @something_to_proof

For me there’s always been a sense of nostalgia attached to baking. I’d help my mum and dad bake, decorate cakes with my grandma and make my own gingerbread houses for Christmas. I worked photographing food and at home would bake for my family and friends - this made me realise I much prefer making food than taking photos of it! I found out about the Advanced Diploma course at The School of Artisan Food and discovered the wonderful world of sourdough - it’s healthier for your gut and full of flavour. Baking evolved into something I became completely immersed in. I found my current job, a Senior Sourdough Baker at a lovely little bakery called Forge Bakehouse - it’s all about Sourdough!

Reynolds, Namasdough, York @namasdough

Being diagnosed with a chronic illness drove me further into baking as it became a necessity to be able to eat. I have absorbed as much information as I can since then to carry over in allergen free baking. I began Namasdough just before lockdown - people would order through my Instagram and many a stressful evening was had throwing things into my uneven tiny kitchen oven. I moved to completely gluten free at the beginning of 2022 and finally got a proper bread oven. Everything I bake is small batch, individual, vegan, NGCI and top allergen free - and it’s baked with calm and peace from my yogi heart. The community of York have been so kind, loving and understanding.

I did a degree in fashion and went to work in London but was more interested in the world of food. I came home and took a job at Salts Diner in Saltaire - once I arrived at the pizza section it clicked. There’s just something magical about hot ovens and dough. After moving around a couple of restaurants in Leeds, a little start up bakery in Shipley, and Lishmans Butchers in Ilkley, I started Edward St Bakery as a pop up from my house. Now we’ve got a shop on Bingley Road! The products we make are based on my favourite foods and childhood memories - I don’t worry about food being authentic, it’s just got to be delicious. All I care about in the world of food is making people smile.

I have always been a keen baker, then when the world went into lockdown I was one of the many who started making sourdough bread - a lot of trial and error but very much a labour of love. I started working at Nova Bakehouse last year, my first professional baking job and I couldn’t love it more. I have learnt so much in such a short time. They have strong ethics at the heart of the business, a focus on fresh flour and good quality produce. I have also been plant based for 5 years, so I often try to adapt recipes into plant based ones.

Roxy Riley, Flour and Feast, Hull @roxyriley_flourandfeast

I did a part time course in patisserie at my local college then got my first baking job in a small local bakery. Looking for more advanced baking work took me to a few different kitchens, and then to London where I worked for Gail’s bakery, which was a real eye opener. Back in my home town of Hull, I opened my own bakery in a small unit with my partner Joe. We outgrew the space within a couple of years and now have our own bricks and mortar bakery where we are a team of 10! We bake a wide variety of Viennoiserie and breads and cakes which we make on site daily. We specialise in traditional artisan methods mixed with more modern techniques and believe in making as much as we can ourselves.

I first got into baking in my 20s when I started to struggle to digest supermarket bread and started baking my own sourdough at home. A few years later I wanted a change of career out of an office - a job at Leeds Bread Coop came up and I've been developing my baking skills here ever since - it was lucky as they couldn’t find a baker with experience at the time. My baking is mainly sourdough, with lots of different flours thrown in. I have always been obsessed with ethics in food supply chains, and for that reason I love finding locally produced food - nothing beats being able to see where something is grown.

I baked with my mum and grandma a lot when I was very small and went on to do an apprenticeship with a wonderful French baker at The Wee Boulangerie in Edinburgh. She taught me so much, and instilled my love of making delicious things from scratch. I got a position at my sisters local bakery which specialised in sourdough, and I became obsessed with how to raise a loaf out of nothing. I’ve now been at Leeds Bread Coop for 4 years now and manage the business along with 10 other amazing colleagues. It is very empowering. My aim is to make delicious and nutritious bread with organic grains, grown locally while keeping it affordable. I’m also a strong believer that the occasional buttery, sugary thing is good for the soul

Ruth Diskin, Mill Kitchen, Farsley @rdiskin21

I’d been dabbling in some home baking and found it almost addictive so I signed up to do a baking course at Leeds City College. This really opened my eyes to the satisfaction found in the methodical nature of baking, whilst still being able to have fun with flavours and ingredients. My first baking job was making all the bread for Graze (now IF). I wanted to properly get to grips with sourdough so applied to work at Leeds Bread Coop - I stayed there for over 6 years and moved to Mill Kitchen last year, giving me the chance to work creatively on a smaller scale. The best part of being a baker is that I get to make (and eat) the most delicious food from the best ingredients - Yorkshire has some incredible food producers, from flour to forced rhubarb. Currently I’m working on setting up my own business, Fat Pigeon Bakery, from a building in my garden in Bramley which I’m hoping to open this Spring.

I have been a keen homebaker my whole life but had not made bread until I moved from Portugal to London. I was not familiar with industrial prepacked loaves so decided to get a bread-making machine and attended an introduction class with Bread Angels. Later, I did a shift at my local bakery and that crystallised the dream for me, opening my microbakery as a side-hustle. Moving to Wakefield in 2018 led to me going full-time with The Crow’s Rest Bakehouse - with massive support from my community who helped me crowdfund for my Rofco oven. My goals are to deliver delicious breads that support our ecosystem, our local economy and our bodies. I work with millers who use stone-ground methods to produce organic and wholegrain flours made with diversed grains and am passionate about reducing the use of animal products. I feel a responsibility to feed people healthy, nutritious products.

It all started when I went on an evening bread baking course at a local college - I loved it and set up a Facebook page called Baked with the dream of one day being able to somehow open a bakery. When I became very ill very quickly it was a huge wake up call - my husband Christian kept me positive, talking about when I got out of hospital we are going to live the dream and build a bakery. Bakers by name, bakers by nature. This saved my life. My aim was to open a bakery less than a year after I got out of hospital. 363 days later we opened the shutter door to Baked - it was the proudest moment of my life. Baked are a micro bakery creating 550 loaves of bread a week - we have two pieces of machinery and everything else is done by hand. We put our, love, heart and soul into making our food and we know that is tasted in the end product.

Seven months ago I had a wonderful little boy, Sid - during my maternity leave I began to work on my own project, Company. Some would say I’m nuts launching a small business whilst having such a young one, I would say the same! The word Company derives from the Latin words ‘com’ and ‘pani’ which translates to ‘with bread’. For my first project, I did a small run of exclusive Valentine hampers with an array of homemade produce and sourdough bread cooked from my home in Halifax. Over the coming months I will be providing local bread subscriptions and attending local markets. I am super proud of where I have got myself to in such a short space of time - and Sid loves a good chunk of his mum’s sourdough!