ALL HAIL THE HEAVENLY BUNS
This Easter, at the Famous Hedgehog Bakery, the Messiah isn’t the only one rising to glory. There are giant hot cross buns in the oven and the temperature is hotting up…
At the Famous Hedgehog Bakery in Dorset, there are giant hot cross buns in the oven and the temperature is hotting up…
They wouldn’t quite feed the five thousand, but these hot cross buns are enormous. At 430g, they’re about six times the weight of a regular bun and, at 18cm, almost as wide as a pencil is long. They’re made at the Famous Hedgehog Bakery in Dorset, where a heady aroma of spice and woodsmoke is in the air as a baker brushes a sticky sugar glaze onto a tray of the super-sized bakes. These buns are a bestseller in the run-up to Easter – last year, the bakery sold 3,000 – although their popularity took owners Jamie and Rose Campbell by surprise. “You can buy regular hot cross buns pretty much all year round,” Jamie says. “We thought extra-large ones might be fun, but we didn’t expect them to sell quite so well.”
Novelty, however, is not the only reason for the bun’s success. Like the bakery’s other bread products, these giant bakes are handmade using organic and, wherever possible, local ingredients. One of only a handful of places to still use a woodfired oven, Famous Hedgehog also sources sustainable fuel from nearby estates. Jamie argues that this traditional baking method is the best way to produce bread. “Bakers have used wood-fired ovens for hundreds of years,” he says. “They provide a gently falling heat rather than the consistent temperature of an electric or gas oven. Our oven produces bread full of character.”
And yet, when you can’t turn a dial to set the temperature, a wood-fired oven also provides a challenge. The bakers at Famous Hedgehog start work at 4pm and must stack wood in the combustion chamber of the oven before they do anything else. They use beech, birch, ash, hazel and sycamore – fastburning woods that initially create an intense heat. Once lit, the flames sweep across the brick arches of the central chamber until it reaches about 400°C two hours later. The clock is then ticking. “Once the fire is out and the oven has cooled to 270°C, the bread goes in,” explains senior baker Adam Wilk. “We load the coolest parts of the oven first because we can’t take it out until it is all done.” The three-metre-square oven takes about 120 loaves, each inserted using a wooden peel. There can be up to three firings a night to produce the fresh bread for the morning.THE BAKERY’S BEGINNINGS
Jamie and Rose value these artisan skills now, but knew little about them when they started the bakery back in 2000. The couple, both architects, moved from London to the village of Long Crichel in Dorset in 1995. After renovating the 18th-century house, they wondered what to do with the semi-derelict stable block in the grounds. “We wanted to build something that would contribute to the village,” Rose says. “We missed the real bread that we used to buy in London, so we thought a bakery might work.”
As a teenager, Jamie had baked and sold bread one summer, but describes it as “terrible stuff ”. To learn expert ways, the couple enrolled on courses in the UK and France. They also asked local baker Paul Merry to design and build them an oven, resulting in a scaled-up version of an old Scottish design. Around the same time, a friend of Jamie’s sent the couple an article about “primal bread” from American Vogue. “Sourdough is everywhere now,” Jamie says, “but 20 years ago, it was much less common. We read this and knew it was the type of bread we wanted to make.”
The bakery produces a whole range of sourdough, including wholemeal, rye, turmeric and khorasan (an ancient Middle Eastern grain). Although hygiene requirements mean the building’s beams have been encased and the cobbled floor lined, Rose believes the space still influences their loaves. “Wild yeasts are living things, so they’re affected by the air around them,” she says. “We used a culture from a grapevine growing up Jamie’s studio in the garden to start the wheat culture. I like to think the bread is very much a product of Long Crichel.”
Although Jamie runs bread-making courses at Famous Hedgehog, the couple have always employed professional
bakers to make the bread they sell. Five bakers currently work there, producing more than 6,000 loaves each week for local shops, restaurants and farmers’ markets, as well as organic delivery business Abel & Cole. Relatively few bakers in the UK, however, know how to use a wood-fired oven. Adam, who has worked at Famous Hedgehog for eight years, learnt in his native Poland, where small bakeries are common. He is now training former supermarket bakery workers Matt Stickley and Nick Button. “Everything was pre-set there. It didn’t take much skill to turn on an oven and shove in some pre-weighed loaves,” Matt says. “The only machine we use here is the mixer. I’ve been here a year and there’s still so much to learn.”
It takes two or three bakers to tip the trough of dough onto a wooden moulding bench. With deft swipes, Adam then ‘scales’ the dough, measuring it into equal portions, before throwing it to Matt, who moulds it for the boules or tins. The loaves are then left to prove on linen ‘couches’ in wooden cupboards. Like much of the equipment, the proving cupboards are on wheels so the bakers can easily move them to an appropriate spot – by the warm oven or into the cold store. It also provides flexibility in a small working space. As the business has grown, Jamie and Rose have converted more of the stable, but are now at capacity.
SWEET TREATS
Once the loaves are baked and the sun is up, the patisserie team move in. The pastry chefs, led by Kareen Gyorkey, produce a changing menu led by seasonal ingredients, as well as all-year-round favourites. It is particularly busy at this time of year when, alongside frangipane tarts and carrot muffins, simnel cakes are in demand. The team produce about 800 simnel cakes in the run-up to Easter and have a production line for the 10,000 marzipan balls. “Every simnel cake needs 11 balls (each representing an apostle of Christ) and we roll each one by hand before blowtorching the top,” Kareen says. “We make the luxury marzipan from scratch, too.”
As well as producing traditional British bakes at Easter, the bakery has embraced Polish ones, such as chalka, a bread made with a sweet, egg-rich dough, topped with a sweet crumble. Adam developed a recipe last year and has been teaching the team the six-plait technique (“They still need a little work”). The Campbells believe bread is a great way to maintain different traditions. “For something with such simple basic ingredients, bread is deceptively complex,” Jamie says. “Every culture has its own variations honed by generations, from everyday loaves to celebration breads. They’re all linked to tradition, people and place.” That might be so, but it would be a shame to have to choose one over the other. No tradition forbids chalka and giant hot cross buns at Easter. This year, you might just find yourself with both.
“The team has a production line for the 10,000 marzipan balls, each one rolled by hand”