ARTISAN BAKERY
FROM DAIRY FARMERS TO BAKERS
I started The Old Farmhouse Bakery in 1982. With a young family, good, nutritious, old-fashioned bread was an important part of our diet. For years I had always been able to buy my bread at a traditional bakery in our village, Steventon, Oxfordshire, but when the baker retired, it closed down.
After searching high and low for a supply of "real bread" I decided to take the matter into my own hands and The Old Farmhouse Bakery was born. As the wife of a farmer it was not a million miles from our family roots and seemed a natural extension to the farming business.
“With a young family, good, nutritious, old-fashioned bread was an important part of our diet. ”
Kate Bitmead
A very simple conversion of the old Shire Horse 'cart' shed made a wonderful bakery and shop; and the old Shire Horse stables became storerooms.
Although the previous bakery in Steventon had been closed for some years the retired baker had continued to fire the oven daily ensuring it was still in good condition. So, for the first time in many years, the oven was left to go cold before being lovingly taken apart piece by piece and taken to the other side of the village and re-built.
Not one piece was damaged or broken in the process. The oven, a 1939 Collins Tridex brick oven that was originally coal fired is, admittedly, part of the secret of achieving such tasty, perfectly baked bread. Most of the tins we bake the bread in to this day also came from the previous village bakery as did our lovely dough trough and bread racks. So, it all goes back a long way! Today the bakery is run by the Bitmead family alongside a small team who are all brilliant at what they do!
