Western Morning News (Saturday)
Martin Hesp meets craft baker Sophie Sidoli to discover the secret of her amazing success Quality the key as baker delivers the goods
Let them eat cake! And why not? Monday marks the beginning of British Cake Week. What that means exactly, I have no idea, but what is certain is that the subject of cake has come an awful long way since the nation’s sugar rations began to be relieved after the last world war.
We Brits consume over a third of a pound in weight of cakes, buns and pastries each week, according to the latest research, and the overall UK bakery market is worth an astonishing £3.9 billion a year.
Indeed, the whole way in which we buy our cakes has changed dramatically since the days when most Western Morning News readers were children. Back then – in my memory at least – mums or grannies made cakes at home, or you bought them in the local village or town bakery.
My mum’s family were bakers, based in the west Somerset village of Stogumber – my great-grandfather and great-grandmother did the baking and their five older daughters did the delivering, each in her own governess cart, taking bread and cakes to the lonely villages and hamlets between the Quantock and Brendon Hills. From what I gather, the cakes and pastries were fairly limited, although I know they did a great line in something called lardy cake, partly because great-grandad kept pigs and so had plenty of lard to hand.
At this time of year, whortleberry pie was the big thing – and although I realise it’s wandering a bit from the subject of cake, the August ‘wort-pies and clotted cream’ offerings which came out of my grandmother’s kitchen were sweet treats I shall never forget. Long after the bakery had closed, she kept on baking, so that an endless supply of huge Victoria sponges and cupcakes seemed to appear in our house next door with never any let-up.
Now the home baking market is growing once again after many years in the doldrums, thanks to a huge uptake during the Covid pandemic – inspired no doubt by the plethora of highly popular TV programmes such as Bake Off. One survey recently showed that home baking is the fourth most popular indoor activity in this country. Just over half the population had a go at some sort of baking during the lockdowns. Cookies, cupcakes and banana bread have been the top three cakes cooked at home in recent months, followed closely by chocolate cake and brownies.
However, the overall picture shows a huge reliance on bought-in bakery items, the vast majority of which (85 per cent by volume) are made in factories. Supermarkets sold just 12 per cent of the cakes we eat, while good old high street bakeries accounted for just three per cent. The ‘let us bake it for you’ industry is vast – more than 27,000 people currently work in some kind of production centre. The good news for the discerning foodie is that there are about 4,500 small craft bakeries in the UK, and that number was growing the last time anyone counted (which was a while ago) when sales of artisanal cakes rose from 172,000 tonnes and a value of £661.1m in 2009 to 176, 000 tonnes and £786.4m in 2014.
I recently met a young woman who is very much part of that trend. Sophie Sidoli is achieving amazing success with the Clementina Cakes venture that she set up last year and she told me something about the new digital marketplace which sees the delivery of her top quality artisan-made brownies and blondies being delivered direct to the customer’s door.
“What I like to say is that my artisan bakery goodies aren’t just a treat – they are an experience,” says Sophie. “I am big on taste – we only use British butter, free range eggs and Belgian white chocolate to make my blondies, and my brownies are packed with five different varieties of chocolate for the perfect balance.”
Anyone reading this from the catering industry might recognise Sophie’s surname. Sidoli is the famous Welsh-based company founded by Sophie’s father Carlo Sidoli that supplies so much of the food service industry with the luxury ready-made gateaux and cakes that you will see looking resplendent and magnificent in glass-panelled chiller cabinets in pubs, restaurants and cafes.
The Sidoli family came to the UK from Italy, where they were farmers, grain-traders and bakers, way back in the 1890s and set about opening a series of Italian-style cafes and restaurants, which eventually inspired Carlo to start creating baked and frozen goods for the catering industry. The company’s products now have an excellent name across the UK, Europe and even the Middle East – but, of course, production of all those high quality frozen products more or less came to a halt during the Covid pandemic.
Sophie, who had already began developing her own postal brownie and blondie concept using her middle name of Clementina for the brand, suddenly found herself with the freedom to use the Sidoli development kitchens to expand her own range.
“The food service side of things closed for the lockdown almost overnight and that’s when I threw myself into developing this and trying that. I had wanted to create a brand which delivered direct to the public – the ambition had been there for quite a long time. Sidoli is basically a frozen-food company
– I wanted to start with something which was robust and non-frozen
which we could guarantee would reach the customer just as it was when it left the building.
“I saw a niche because, although there were other companies selling baked products direct to the consumer, I felt the quality was not there. I suppose because of my background it’s all about quality and consistency – wanting to put that ethos into practice along with using the bee’s knees ingredients in our products.
“One of the skill sets learned from my father is in developing recipes and I wanted to make brownies that were, to my mind, the best you could have. So we started using the best ingredients – we even sourced a specific blend of flour from Matthews Cotswold Flour. Now we have really nailed the brownie and blondie recipe and are developing gluten-free and vegan versions.
“My father is the most difficult of judges to please, but there was a point when I had to show him what we were doing and he thought we had a great product,” Sophie told me. “Now it’s about getting people to taste them – the frustrating thing with lockdown was that there was no going to
food shows and getting people to try our products – but that’s all about to happen.”
And there’s another element to modern cake-making – today’s companies have to think about climate change and sustainability just as much as they need to worry about toppings or whatever else.
“We have massive targets to hit with sustainability and health – we were one of the first companies to stop using hydrogenated fats and we use local ingredients whenever
we can. In my spare time, I am helping my boyfriend on his organic dairy farm – so all this is really important to me.
“People aren’t educated enough about food or where it comes from – and I think we really need to go back to the basics when it comes to things like baking,” Sophie said.
Which is undoubtedly a sound and solid principle to be working on and particularly interesting for those of us who remember the kind of traditional village bakeries that fed this nation for centuries.
There are good sides and bad when it comes to the new online marketplace, but one huge benefit is that artisan producers can flourish by delivering direct to customers anywhere in the country. My grandmother and her sisters were doing that 100 years ago, but they could only reach two or three parishes in their governess carts. Sophie’s Clementina Cakes are available from Land’s End to John O’Groats…