Butchers That Bake
Our approach to baking...
“Everyone who works in bakery production – there’s around 15 of us – has their own personal speciality, so we’ve become specialists in that particular bakery product. In fact, most of our products are finished by hand which is very different to mass-scale ‘conveyor factory’ systems.”
Creating our pies...
“We make our pastry from scratch in batches using good quality flour and fats: Short Crust, Rough Puff, Hot Water Crust, Extra Short (Gourmet). Then our butchers make the fillings in batches: the steak pie filling is diced, then mixed with the gravy (sometimes adding extras such as ale or stilton) and steamed in cooking bags overnight for 10 hours to produce a tender filling that has retained its own cooking liquor. The pork pie meat is minced and mixed with our special blend of seasoning. Next, we stamp out our pastry cases by hand into various shapes and sizes. And, finally, we fill the casings. The pies are then either frozen in batches and boxed to be sent out or put ready to be baked off – depending on how each customer requires them.”
My personal favourites…
“Our sausage rolls are all totally handmade, which is a time-consuming job – the only problem is they’re so good that we sell thousands! And we’ve now added a range of different flavours – from Chorizo to Pork & Black Pudding, Turkey & Stuffing and Pork & Cranberry. Yum!”