Feast your mince pies on this little lot!
BEHIND THE SCENES AT BAKER PRODUCING 10,000 OF THE FESTIVE DELICACIES
MINCE pies are on sale all year round at Stacey’s Bakery shops, but the week before Christmas production rockets to 10,000.
This time of year it’s all systems go with the manufacturing of the festive favourites switching from handmade to help from a machine so the bakery can keep up with demand.
“It will go from 200 a week in August to 10,000 on Christmas week. Normally they’re almost all made by hand but we have to change to use a biscuit machine to make things a little bit more efficient,” said the bakery’s fourth generation owner David Stacey, who can hardly bear to look at another mince pie come December 25.
The bakery at the back of the shop in South Street, Ilkeston, is a hive of industry with staff filling fruit pies, icing vanilla slices and attending to the constant bleeps of alarms signalling that items are ready to come out of the largescale ovens.
As well as South Street – where customers are queuing out the door – the company also has another three shops: Bath Street, in the town, Heanor and Eastwood.
As well as mince pies, bakers are turning out festive sausage rolls filled with pork, bacon, chicken, cranberries and stuffing. “It’s a Christmas meal in your hands is what we like to say,” said David.
Then there’s Christmas cakes, Yule logs, a festive loaf with cranberries and ginger, and gingerbread snowmen, Christmas trees and reindeer.
That’s on top of all the other everyday products such as cream cakes, scones, flapjacks, muffins, jam tarts, fruit pies, cobs and bread.
Trends have changed since David, 42, began helping out as a teenager during the school holidays. His dad Richard and uncle Andrew used to run the business, and he helped out with the cobs.
Sausage rolls have become increasingly popular. As well as the seasonal Christmas fillings, Stacey’s gives customers a choice of standard pork, or cider and bacon, and there are two vegan options, too, so bakers are kept busy making up to 1,000 for the weekend.
David said: “We are selling a lot less bread now than we did 20 years ago – it’s probably a third. We still have all the equipment and are geared up to mass produce that but the demand isn’t there.
“We are in Ilkeston so there is a ceiling of how fancy we can make
You’ve got to want to do it. No one naturally wakes up at 2am that’s for sure.
things. We make sourdough once a week but me and another baker tend to take most of it home ourselves.”
The shelves are lined with wholemeal, seeded and tin loaves, but the most popular bread is the cake loaf.
If you’ve never heard of it, David explains: “It’s like a rounded bloomer baked directly on the stone of the oven, a big traditional oven.
“I believe it’s called a cake loaf because it’s meant to have a little bit more flavour than your bog standard white loaf.
“The idea is you can eat it as a treat with a bit of butter and a cup of tea – it’s not there just to take your sandwich, it’s there to eat by itself.
“We don’t put any sugar in any of our breads but a strong loaf if you get it right should have a bit of sweetness to it, but it’s not a cake by any stretch of the imagination. It’s just called a cake loaf – I think it comes from Victorian times. I’ve never heard anyone else use the term cake loaf so it’s probably an Ilkeston thing.”
Bread sales may have declined over the decades but last year the bakers were at full capacity when the first lockdown was announced and other bakeries in the town initially closed.
David said: “Eighteen months ago, when lockdown came and people were panicking after the toilet rolls ran out, they were buying bread so we had a taste of what it was probably like 40 years ago.
“It was incredible the surge in bread demand. The great thing was we could manage as we’ve still got all the equipment.
“We never closed for a day. It was so difficult to manage. We were the only option in Ilkeston.”
With four industrial-sized mixers on the go, it proved a valuable lesson in efficiency for David, while the company struggles to recruit.
“You don’t do this for the money, there are plenty of other jobs out there. Nothing prepares you for this kind of work, it’s quite unique,” he said.
“We have around 35 staff – it was
David Stacey
about 40 but we’re almost at bare bones as people have left and it’s so difficult to recruit
“It can be a difficult job, go go go, alarms going off and quite stressful. If it is stressful you’re probably doing it right. If you’re finding it easy you’re probably not working efficiently, that’s it with baking.
“People watch the Great British Bake off; they make the dough, let it rise, watch it while bakes in the oven. We don’t have any of those luxuries.
“While that’s going on at the same time we’re mixing one dough, processing another into shapes, another one in the proover, another in the oven – you have all these things going on at the same time. It is hectic at times going back and forth.”
It’s not just the juggling of different tasks that’s challenging, it’s also the hours and lifestyle.
“You’ve got to want to do it. No one naturally wakes up at 2am, that’s for sure. In the week we’re baking from 3am. all the bread is out of the oven by 8am and then some of the staff are doing deliveries to the shops, finishing around midday.
“after that there’s other things to make... sausage rolls, gingerbread men, and fruit pies to bake.”
Weekends are even tougher, with
bakers starting work on Friday at 10pm, and finishing anytime between 6am and 9am on Saturday.
David, who studied business management at lancashire university, said he “fell into” the family business, first started by his great grandfather Charles Guy Stacey in the early 1900s. The former Coldstream Guard was twice shot on the frontline during World War one and was pensioned off.
He is thought to have opened a bakery in lincolnshire after the war before moving to set up in Bath Street, Ilkeston, in the 1930s – the original Derbyshire site before South Street. His son Charles (David’s grandfather) went on to run the business.
David said: “I don’t know how they managed to bake at Bath Street as it was tiny, like a terraced house. Dad tells me stories of having to carry 10st bags of flour on his head up steps into the store room.
“When I started a bag of flour was 5st, now its 2.5st. We have two big silos outside that flour can get pumped into – it’s a lot more practical for baking.
“I’m a little bit spoilt. I have inherited a business that’s always done relatively well. We’re quite unique, there’s not a great deal of traditional town centre bakeries left now.”
David, a father of three daughters, said he will leave it up to the girls to decide whether they want to join the family business when they’re older.
The eldest, who is 12, has been in during the summer holidays to help to decorate gingerbread men.
“If they want to do it I’ll let them but I’ll let them know there are some easier jobs and they can have a nicer life and feel more relaxed and enjoy life a bit more,” he added.