I needed to understand how to make Eccles cakes, and a cheeky tweet last month asking if any baker in Bristol would deliver to my office at the foot of the Christmas Steps led me early this morning to Hart’s Bakery in Cotham. I say early, but I arrived soon after 7am and Laura Hart and her new apprenticeship Tori had been there since 5.30am.
Laura (right) had promised to show me how she makes her Eccles cakes, something she normally only bakes on Saturday mornings to sell at her stall at Planet Pizza on the Gloucester Road but which she made a special exception for yesterday.
My urge to know everything about Eccles cakes will be made clear if you attend the Ignite Bristol event at the Tobacco Factory next week. For now, let me just confirm with the backing of most of my office of hungry hoards that Laura’s Eccles cakes, and other assorted pastries and breads, are absolutely bloody marvelous.
Laura had a career as a pastry chef in Bristol that took her from Quartier Vert to Bordeaux Quay, Ocean tapas bar, Arch House Deli and the Lido, before returning nine years to the day since she started at Quartier Vert’s second kitchen, back to this space behind what is now Picture House East, to set up her own business.
As Hart’s Bakery, Laura sells her wares from this small kitchen on Hampton Lane, off Cotham Hill, from Monday to Friday. On Saturday mornings, she sets up a stall on the Gloucester Road, while her lovingly-made creations are also sold in Picture House East and Ruby & White on Whiteladies Road, EarthBound on nearby Abbotsford Road, and in my new favourite cafe, 40 Alfred Place in Kingsdown.
Baking her own pastries in her own bakery and selling them to the public is something that Laura has always wanted to do. Her speciality croissants are an example of the way things are done properly here, being made with French butter over a three-day process, proving really slowly so they get as much flavour as possible.
“I make all the things I just love to make,” says Laura, in between kneading, rolling and pulling trays of steaming, wonderfully-smelling pastries and breads from her ovens, which she says she wishes were bigger so she could keep up with demand.
A constant challenge is estimating how much to make each morning, to prevent any excess. But some days they sell literally like hot cakes, and other days there are left-overs.
Laura grew up surrounded by people who grew and made their own food. Although not evangelical, she hopes her bakery will remind people what a labour-intensive process making bread can be, and how nothing - not even six rolls sold for pennies as a loss-leader in a supermarket – can beat the goods from a true artisan baker.
“I would love to see this everywhere in Bristol,” Laura says. “People do not travel a long distance to buy their bread, it’s your local area usually. Lots of people have that dream of opening their own bakery, and the more people who are doing it the better. It’s promoting real baking.
“There’s so little knowledge because people are so used to commercially-produced stuff. We have to re-educate them; people’s perception of what bread should be needs to change.
“It’s not my place to say what bread should be, but I want to make people realise the real cost of bread is quite different to what it costs in supermarkets. It’s not a cheap commodity, not a cheap staple thing. It’s worth using the best ingredients, I wouldn’t use anything else.”
After almost a year as Hart’s Bakery, Laura is pleased still to be here. She says she could easily sell double what she sells now, but although the current premises prohibit baking anything more than she already does, she won’t be looking to move quite yet, having built up a strong customer base in this area where there are many households willing to pay for her goods and surrounded by businesses willing to help her out.
“The fear originally was that I might want what I was making, but nobody else would,” Laura tells me midway through the Eccles cakes’ time in the oven.
“I’m so pleased that people like what I do, even though it’s a struggle. Seven days a week, relentless work, and when the baking stops having to learn about book-keeping, marketing, the website. It’s a steep learning curve and in some ways, the baking is the easy bit.”
Laura has recently taken on two apprentices, as well as having a number of willing volunteers.
She brings in more income by monthly baking workshops and one-off jobs such as wedding cakes. She is even planning a pizza evening next month in 40 Alfred Place, and if her pizzas are anything like her pastries it should be an amazing night.
I defy you to try one of Laura’s creations and not declare it the best thing since sliced bread. Since I brought a bag of her croissants into work last week, a few workmates have spoken of nothing but Hart’s Bakery, and minutes after I left Hampton Lane this morning, my colleague Anthony arrived to buy croissants, oblivious to my identical purchase to share out among the office floor, alongside those Eccles cakes.
There is something wonderfully refreshing to spend a morning surrounded by the smell of baking and a hive of activity while everyone else around is still fast asleep. But the hard work is paying off for Laura and Hart’s Bakery, and if I could urge you to do one thing, it would be to stop and to think before you next buy a loaf of bread or croissant in a supermarket, especially Sainsbury’s on Whiteladies Road, and make the short trip around the corner to Hart’s Bakery for the real thing.
If there is demand for it, Laura will even have some freshly-made Eccles cakes for you.
