Starting out
Thornbury Bakehouse opened in 2019 in the old butcher’s unit on Radford Street. The tiling is still there behind the counter — we kept it because it was better than anything we could have put in.
It’s me, Ellen, and two bakers: Sam, who has been here since the second month, and Priya, who joined in 2023 and now runs the pastry side entirely. Between the three of us we make everything that leaves the shop.
The starter
Our sourdough starter came from my grandmother’s kitchen in Shropshire and has been going since 1998. It gets fed twice a day, comes on holiday with us, and is the reason the bread tastes the way it does rather than the way supermarket sourdough tastes.
People ask whether that’s a gimmick. It isn’t — a starter that old carries a mix of yeasts and bacteria you simply can’t rush into existence. You’d taste the difference blind.
A normal day
Sam is in at four to shape what was mixed the previous afternoon. Priya starts at five on the pastries. The first loaves come out at half six, the doors open at seven, and by two we’re usually cleaning down with empty shelves.
We don’t bake to a target. We bake what we think will sell that day, and if we’re wrong the leftovers go to the food bank on Newcastle Road rather than into a bin.
What we won’t do
We don’t do sandwiches, we don’t do celebration cakes, and we don’t supply wholesale. Every time we’ve tried to add something, the bread has got worse. So we stopped trying.
