Having started life in our home kitchen we’re now ready to launch an authentic Artisan Bakery/Cafe in Nottingham City Centre!
In 2013, in a quiet end terrace in Mapperley Park, The Bakehouse was born.
I had spent the last 8 years working as a chef in Rosette and Michelin star kitchens and the time had come to build something of my own. Bread has always been my passion. I first learnt the art of bread making at Langar Hall, where every morning before service we would make the bread fresh for that day. Over the years I have continued to learn and develop this skill, and last year traveled to Edinburgh to spend time with Andrew Whitley, co founder of the Real Bread Campaign and founder of Bread Matters.
We started off small, every weekend we attended farmers markets and sold our homemade breads to people across the county. We knew we were onto something good as we rarely brought home any leftovers, but people would ask where they could get our bread and we didn’t have a base we could direct people to.
One afternoon, while sat in our local pub we got chatting to the landlord about our markets and our love for delivering local artisan bread to the area. “Why don’t you sell from here on a Saturday morning before we open?” This was the base we had been looking for!
Every Friday night we stayed up all night making bread from our home kitchen ready to sell the next morning. On our first morning we sold 100 loaves of bread in one hour! The demand grew from there, we would show up on a Saturday to a queue of people waiting for bread, and it wasn’t long before businesses were requesting trade orders from us.
A year later we realised that we had reached full capacity, we had finally outgrown our little home oven and would need to look for somewhere bigger. But, as luck would have it we hadour own little bun in the oven! Now that our baker’s apprentice is here, we area ready to make the dream of expanding The Bakehouse into a reality.
So why Kickstarter? We have always known what we would do with our bakery if we were lucky enough to launch it, and we have managed to secure most of the funding we need. The building, the suppliers, and the demand are all in place. We just need your help to make sure we have equipment we need to make it work.
So here’s what we are hoping to create:
The Bakehouse will be a venue that combines all that is good about The Creative Quarter andHockley by bringing a venue like no other to Nottingham. Providing a space for like-minded, creative professionals to drink, eat and relax in a vibrant, comfortable setting.
This will be the only authentic artisan bakery in the city centre with bread being made and baked on site. The open plan bakery will allow customers to see the bread being made by myself and our bakers which will create a great sense of theatre and the smell of the fresh baked bread will waft through the whole venue.
The Bakehouse will work with Nottingham’s best coffee roaster 200 degrees’ coffee, to ensure we serve some of the best coffee in the area. The lay out and furniture will provide a space like no other in Hockley where people can feel comfortable to work, meet clients and colleagues during the day and unwind in the evenings with a nice beer, wine or spirit that is carefully selected for their quality and point of difference. As well as providing a vibrant bakery, café/bar space The Bakehouse would also provide space for events including live music, cinema nights, exhibitions and pop-up markets. The venue would look to bring together all of the greatindependent offerings throughout Hockley, and Nottingham as a whole to really showcase the amazing produce and entrepreneurs we have in this great city.
The Bakehouse will be a real destination venue within the city, providing a vibrant space for like-minded people to come together and share ideas in a cool fresh venue. This will provide Nottingham with a multi-functional establishment comparable to those in other major cities such as London or Manchester.
We have spent months researching what equipment we will need in order to supply enough bread to the good people of Nottingham. Here’s what we hope to get with your generous contributions.
Working closely with our builders and suppliers we feel that we have planned a timescale which is realistic to aim towards.
If you would like to find out a bit more about us you can get in touch in the following ways:
Email: thebakehousenotts@outlook.com
Facebook: www.facebook.com/thebakehousenotts
We are extremely excited about bringing such a unique project to Nottingham. As with anything that is new or unique to an area we would hope that it is well received. Based on the research we have done we feel there is a demand for a bakery of this kind in Nottingham, and we have started to build up a good following on our Facebook page. We hope all of this will mean it is a great success once open.
Our mantra is always where possible to use fresh, local ingredients. With this however, we also appreciate that factors such as weather or supplier demand may affect the ingredients we would prefer to use. Our promise is that we will strive to ensure the quality of our bread is not affect by this.
We hope that demand for our bread is high! With this, it may mean that at times we sell out of bread. While our bakers will bake around the clock to make sure fresh bread is always available, if you do buy a reward that includes a loaf of bread please call ahead so we can make sure there is a loaf with your name on it!