I CAME across Nick’s company via a very modern route, through the world of Twitter. However, what the former international law publisher is doing is completely the opposite – he is making bread how they did in the good old days.
What made me really interested was his claim that his team use just flour, water, salt and time. An increasing number of people are finding that a standard supermarket loaf just does not cut it. They feel bloated from the fast yeast pumped into the bread and there is a real surge for wanting healthy, natural food with identifiable ingredients.
I turned up at 7am at The Slow Bread Co’s headquarters under a railway arch opposite Stamford Brook Tube station to see the team in action. I was greeted by a delicious smell of baking bread and a hive of activity as the small crew rushed about shaping baguettes, kneading dough and preparing the next day’s leaven (rising agent).
Nick, 50, says the company is his version of a mid-life crisis.
He said: “This is my Ferrari. I’ve always enjoyed baking and paid my way through uni by working in restaurants. My wife started taking in my experiments to a local deli in Queen’s Park where we live. It was quite popular so they asked if I could do all of their bread, but you really can’t do that many loaves in a kitchen oven so when I retired I decided to go the whole hog and start up my own bakery.
"There are not many independent bakers now because they’ve all retired or died. I don’t like the taste of the standard British bread, which is why I started baking. I read Bread Matters by Andrew Whiteley and now that informs everything I do here.
“The most important thing is fermentation; we mix flour and water to make the natural leaven and leave it for 24 hours to prove and ferment.
“The flour we use is really important as well. We’re making bread like it used to be made about 50 years ago so it was important to have a flour that reflected the natural process we use.
“We try not to have added gluten and wanted a flour that was as local as we could get, so we use Marriages Millers in Chelmsford, Essex, which has been a family business since the 1820s.
“The problem with the process that is used so much nowadays is that it doesn’t have time to gobble up the nasties in the flour so people suffer when they eat bread.
“When people started using the modern process that was when people started getting coeliac disease, so although our bread can’t be eaten by people who truly have the disease, many people who feel bloated and unwell normally, can eat our bread.”
Nick is one of a new breed of bakers who approach the skill from an academic standpoint as well as a practical one.
The bakery has been running for five months and there is only one other permanent member of staff. Nick is there from 5.30am every day with experienced baker Kim Lloyd, who was busily whipping up divine-smelling ciabatta when I arrived.
The duo are helped by a steady flow of volunteers who love baking so much they are willing to do the morning rush before heading to work. They range from keen home bakers to trainee chefs and the waiting list is choc-a-block.
Why set up shop in Stamford Brook? Well, Nick explained, first it was available and had the appropriate power needed for baking and second, the demographic; where better to be than a stone’s throw from Chiswick with all its delis, gastro pubs and food conscious people.
The Slow Bread Co bakes to order and provides bread to most of the delis in Chiswick, as well as restaurants and delis in Notting Hill, Battersea and Barnes. It may only have been running for five months but orders are coming in thick and fast, so much so that Nick is having to get a new oven more than double the size of the current one.
Nick’s passion for natural baking certainly shows in his bread, and with The Slow Bread Co’s product spreading fast, you may soon find it easy to share his taste.
