The Old Kent Road is a million miles away from the idyllic rural stereotype usually associated with speciality or artisan foods. But nestled away in an industrial estate just past PC World and before Toys R Us is one very special 20-tonne Llopis wood-fired bread-baking oven from Barcelona, and one very passionate team around it.
The team are Tracey and Tony Woodward, owners of the popular East Dulwich Deli on London's Lordship Lane, master baker Manuel Monade and three trainees: collectively known as Born & Bread.
Monade first made a name for himself at London's St John, where in 1995 he began baking bread for the restaurant to such acclaim that he was soon selling it to other businesses in the area. In 2002 he left and went to work at the deli with Tracey and Tony, also a chef, where an increasing frustration with the quality of bread available was spurring on a plan.
"We realised there was nothing on offer that resembled the kind of bread we wanted to sell ourselves," Tracey says. "We wanted bread to regain its prominence on the table and we were fed up with people buying in half-baked loaves, whacking them in the oven and calling them fresh. It's in breach of trading standards!"
Monade, originally from France and now living in Peckham, spent two years sourcing the right oven and the right flour. Eventually he found organic flour from a miller in the Loire Valley, who offered 11 different grades, as opposed to the two or three he could find here. Using organic apples from Kent, he collected yeast for the starter ("harnessing wild horses", he calls it), then went about making his bread.
Speed, or lack of it, is the key to his skill: "Commercial bakers are under pressure to make the bread quickly and so use a lot of yeast to make it rise quickly," he says. "But if you do everything quickly, mixing the dough, proving it, and baking it straightaway, you will get what you deserve: awful bread."
Breadwise, the aim is for a big contrast between crust and crumb: hard outside and a moist, developed, crumb inside. Although young, the company already has 23 wholesale customers - including delis, such as the food shop attached to the restaurant Sonny's in Barnes, and restaurants such as Gastro in Clapham and Delfina Studio Caf‚ near London Bridge. Monade's loaves have also met with approval from Observer Food Monthly editor Nigel Slater and Peter Gordon from the Providores restaurant.
But it's not just the end-product that makes this operation special. The oven runs off wood from sustainable woodland in Kent, the ash is given to gardeners as fertiliser, and customers get 10p off if they re-use their bags. Beyond ecological concerns, Born & Bread is also trying to involve the local community and help counter the lack of trained bakers.
"There are only about 700 master bakers left in this country now," Monade says, "of which only half practice anything resembling artisan methods."
If he can get young people to learn again the skills of proper baking, Monade believes he will be able to jog people out of the reliance on the supermarket standard.
"In France you have so many of these ovens," Monade says, "but here baking is going down the drain."
Tracey adds that she would like to see the business incorporate a training school. She currently employs three young trainees from the area, and will add more when the business expands - including, she says, trainees from the older generation who, if they find themselves made redundant, often don't have the skills they need to regain employment. She even plans to invite in kids from local schools to learn how to bake bread.
"We don't want to take over the world," she adds. "But we do want to give people new ideas, a continuous regeneration to keep them interested in the quality of food." n
What they BakeMonade bakes about 10 different varieties, including: the Kentish flute, round white, large white, large wholemeal, small wholemeal, walnut and raisin, focaccia, rye, sourdough and other seasonal varieties. Minimum orders are 20 loaves per day. The whole range can be delivered inside the M25 area. At the present time, only the rye bread can be mail-ordered further afield. Two deliveries are possible each day, to keep bread as fresh as possible.
For further information contact Born & Bread, 15a Lordship lane, London, SE22 8EW.
Tel: 020 8693 1222