This Real Bread Week visit one of the best bakeries in Suffolk.
Lusting after a proper loaf? Each of these craft bakers makes their bread from scratch, often using local flour and other regionally-sourced ingredients.
Go pick up some decent baked goods this Real Bread Week. Whether it’s a baker’s sliced white, a sourdough cob or a few sneaky doughnuts – you’ll definitely taste the difference.
Palmers Bakery (across west Suffolk)
With outlets in Stanton, Stowmarket, Woolpit, Claydon and Ipswich, Palmers is definitely an institution in the local baking world.
But the engine room of the business is in Haughley, where all the breads, cakes and pastries for the shops are made, from scratch by owner Kieron Ruddy and his team.
The bakery can trace its origin’s in Kieron’s family back to 1864, and the team still uses the ancient oil-fired brick oven. Marriage’s flour, local eggs, meat from the local butcher and real yeast form the basis of products at Palmers, which prides itself on using only ‘real’ ingredients.
As well as a huge range of bread there are cream doughnuts, buttery Vienneses fingers, Eccles cakes, huge Belgian buns and irresistible sundaes, made up of short pastry filled with Tiptree blackcurrant preserve, piped with proper buttercream and a dusting of icing sugar. Heavenly!
Find out more here.
Two Magpies Bakery, Southwold
This place has really carved a name for itself in Suffolk in a relatively short space of time. The bakery uses Marriages flour and a variety of seeds and wholegrains for its bread, and luxurious French butter in its pastries.
Sourdough culture is used in all of the doughs for added flavour and keeping qualities (one of the starters is over 200 years old) winning the bakery praise in the World Bread Awards for its fig and fennel sourdough and 30% rye with raisins and rosemary.
Try some of the cakes too. The chocolate double Broadside cake made with local beer and whisky is a proper treat.
Find out more about the Two Magpies Bakery here.
Woosters
Young baker Will Wooster won Best Newcomer in the EADT Suffolk Food and Drink awards recently. Baking at Bardwell Mill, Will makes perfect white loaves, multi grain loaves, flavoured breads and simply the very best, sticky malt loaf ever.
You can order bread to collect from the mill from Wednesday to Saturday. Or find the Woosters stall at Hadleigh market on Friday mornings and at Wyken Farmers’ Market on Saturday mornings.
Find out more about Woosters here.
The Bread Basket, Walton
For over 25 years The Bread Basket has been serving residents of Walton and beyond. But baker and owner Kevin Adams has baked in the Felixstowe area since he left school. Six days a week he can be found at the shop making all-natural, hand-finished loaves, from white and wholemeal to rye and granary, as well as cakes, filled rolls and snacks such as sausage rolls (made using meat from the local butcher).
The bakery has been awarded low salt status by Trading Standards for lowering the levels of salt in its breads.
Read more about The Bread Basket here.
The Cake Shop Bakery, Woodbridge
Family-run since 1946, The Cake Shop has won multiple awards including Britain’s Best Bakery on the ITV show in 2014.
As well as supplying bread to numerous local businesses, the shop on Woodbridge’s Thoroughfare sells some of the best baked goods around to visitors, all made using high quality ingredients.
The counter and storage area behind brim with all kinds of breads and rolls, from your traditional country-style loaves to sourdough, ciabatta, focaccia and rustic baguettes. Try their tasty Suffolk root cake too.
Read more about The Cake Shop Bakery here.
Cradle, Sudbury
A truly game-changing bakery and café. Holly and Christophe’s vision for this place was for it to be a vegan eatery that really delivers on flavour. And they’ve really done it. Exquisite breads are made by milling flour themselves in the shop’s mill (see it in the café) with only local and organic ingredients used.
Especially fabulous are the croissants which are made with the couple’s own vegan butter blend and taste exactly like their buttery counterparts. Inventive, flavoursome and ethical, this place is well worth a look.
Find out more about Cradle here.
Pump treet, Orford
Foodie father and daughter team Chris and Jo have stormed the bread world in Suffolk, winning awards and making sourdough more appealing to the local masses.
Members of the Real Bread Campaign, Chris and Jo stick true to making proper bread and, as well as making a basic white and brown loaf, create an array of sourdoughs – from 40% rye to white, walnut and cherry and malt and ale.
Buy some of their bean to bar chocolate while you’re there. Oh, and one of their Eccles cakes, Canadian butter tarts or bear claws.
Read more about Pump Street bread and chocolate here.
Sparling and Faiers, Lavenham
This historic bakery was voted the Most Loved in East Anglia during Craft Bakers’ Week 2015.
Anne Faiers moved to the bakery with her parents in 1952, and today runs the business with her sons David and Richard.
Traditional loaves, cakes, biscuits and savouries are sold at the shop, and supplied to delis and farm shops within a 40 mile radius.
The best-seller is the bakery’s granary pat – a round loaf marked into eight to 10 sections.
Weston’s Bakery, Sudbury
A real family affair, run by lifetime baker Pat Weston, wife Christine, their daughter Liz and Pat’s son Jerry.
The family pride Weston’s on being a ‘hot’ bread shop, with all bread baked and sold on the premises (in fact you can see it being made in the background).
Specialities include white, wholemeal and malted flake laoves, Danish-style bread, bloomers, knots and a very special spelt bread with a touch of honey.
Find the bakery on Gaol Lane.
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