Alan Ackroyd

Bakery: Cobs Bakery
Location: Cambridge

Alan has been baking organic bread in Cambridge since 2004, and we have been putting his bread in our boxes right from the start. We get a delivery of fresh bread every morning, and if you have a loaf of Cobs bread with your box it will be delivered to you on the same day that it is baked.
The secret to the excellent quality of Cobs bread is that Alan has revived an old process of baking that allows bread to be baked on a commercial scale without improvers. Improvers were introduced shortly after world war 2, and nowadays are used for baking virtually all shop bought bread. Ironically, improvers do nothing to improve the quality of the bread, in fact their role does quite the opposite. They are a concoction of chemicals and ingredients that condition the gluten and feed the yeast to dramatically speed up the raising time, and make commercial baking more time efficient. However, as the flavours of bread develop during the raising process the bread which has been baked with improvers is flavourless. Combined with the additives which add days onto a loaf's shelf life and it is no wonder that the tasteless sliced white loaves, which cling unpleasantly to the roof of your mouth have popularly become termed ‘plastic’ bread.
Good quality bread takes time, something Alan knows only too well. Typically he will work 70 hours a week, starting at 9 in the evening and working through the night. Alan recently told me a story of a lady who he gave a sample of his spelt loaf to at a farmers market. She loved bread but hadn’t eaten it for years because it caused bloating. She came back the following week and bought four, thrilled that they not only tasted great but that she had found a loaf she could eat. ‘That sort of thing is worth working all night to achieve’, said Alan.

Products: Full range of organic breads