Since the Natural Bread Company opened their latest cafe just a 30-second walk from my office, I’ve been in regularly for coffee and sandwiches, so I’d almost forgotten that NBC are not just a single cafe but a brilliant producer, supplying farmers’ markets and restaurants across Oxford and the surrounding area. So I popped in a couple of weeks ago to chat to Charlotte and Charlie, the current managers, to find out a bit more about what they do and why they do it!
The very first hint of what was to become NBC came in 2006, when Charlotte’s mum, Claire, started baking cakes to supply to their local Appleton farmers’ market. Charlotte’s dad, Will, quickly realised he wanted in on the act, too, and in 2007 he started baking bread to supply alongside those cakes. The production was initially very small-scale (just Will in his garage), but they quickly expanded to cover other farmers’ markets in East Oxford (where I first found them!) and Wolvercote.
However, the first large expansion came in 2012, when they opened a shop in Eynsham and started selling hundreds of loaves a week, alongside a growing range of cakes and pastries created by Claire. The next year, they opened in Woodstock and paired up with HasBean coffee roasters so that they could run a cafe alongside the shop; just a few months later they opened their Little Clarendon cafe and shop. They now bake over 4,000 loaves every week, sold through their shops, various farmers’ markets, and direct to local restaurants including 1855, the Mogford empire, The Magdalen Arms, coffee fiend favourites Quarter Horse and The Missing Bean, and the Vaults and Garden.
Those not familiar with the rules of sourdough baking will be amazed to find that they’re still using the same “starter” - the yeast mother from which each loaf is born - as they did in 2007. That’s one of the elements of what makes their bread taste so great: the variety of yeasts all create slightly different compounds as they break down the flour, leading to a much richer tasting bread. The only exception to this starter rule is for their “Pugliese” loaf, baked with durum flour from a starter over 70 years old, shipped in from Italy by Will a few years ago.
Then there’s the flour. NBC decided early on that they were more interested in working with a local company, with whom they could build a relationship, than with an overseas company who might meet other sustainable aims, like producing organically-certified flour. They chose to work with Wessex Mill, based in Wantage, who in turn buy their wheat from a variety of local farms with whom they have personal longstanding relationships. Those relationships mean that NBC can be quite precise about exactly what flour they source for each individual type of bread.
After the starter and the flour, all the bread needs is water, salt, and time. Charlotte emphasised to me how important that last of those is: all their loaves rise for a minimum of 24 hours. The average supermarket loaf, on the other hand, is given less than an hour. The slowness of the rise, along with the variety of yeasts mentioned earlier, results in a much deeper flavour. The breads vary in the exact processes they go through before baking - their dark rye loaf needs more kneading, for example - but the aim through all the processes is to increase the flavour of the final loaf.
Having spent the last three years in solid expansion mode, NBC are now taking a year or two to settle back and, as Charlie says, to have a bit of a play with various new ideas! They’ve already imported a specialist cold-brewing machine for coffee from Canada, which I can testify makes an amazing iced coffee. On the other hand, they’re keen to keep doing what they do best. The Far Breton, an almost custardy prune cake, has been on the menu since 2006, and isn’t going to go anywhere!
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