We’re now spoilt for choice for brilliant bakeries in London. Time used to be when getting a good croissant was almost laughable in its impossibility. But there are bakers now that are doing incredible things with flour, whether it be Helen Evans’ near-perfect pain au chocolat at Eric’s in East Dulwich or Adriann Ramirez’s boisterousness with stewed fruit up at Fink’s in North London. A rising trend amongst all this is the return of British baking of the nostalgic kind. Think Anna Higham’s Quince, where she plays with sweet shop classic flavours like rhubarb and custard in an adult way or Chatsworth Bakehouse’s passionfruit and coconut iced fingers.
Joining them in a nostalgia for treats of days gone by is baker Richard Hart, he of Copenhagen’s Hart Bageri and the extremely famous signature sourdough bread. He’s the big British name behind the new Claridge’s Bakery, which opened on 21 January on the backside of the luxury London hotel on Brook’s Mews. It’s the hotel’s first ever standalone bakery.
Hart, who appears when I visit, bedecked in a suitably Nordic jumper, says working in Denmark after a long stint in California as Head Baker at the legendary Tartine changed his perspective on bakeries. He had to adapt to the “traditions, tastes and expectations of the Danes… bakeries are places to make people happy, to fill them with delight and stir up memories. So I gave people familiar things, with perhaps a little something of my own,” he says.
He's applying the same philosophy in London, reviving classic British flavours and bakes that we all remember and love, and have perhaps taken with us into adulthood. He won’t be handling the day-to-day, though – he has to head back to his home in Mexico. That task will fall to Claridge’s Head Baker Frédéric Doncel-Latorre – young, French and with a new fondness for Marmite, more on which later.
