"But now the design has become so tightly bound with our food and our way of doing things that I can't really imagine it any other way." So Yotam stayed to run the Ledbury Road shop, and the task of keeping the new store going falls onto Jim Webb.

"What's been the big difference between doing this place and doing the other place at Ledbury road? I think the big difference for us has been the restaurant side, that was the biggest challenge", says Jim. "With the Ledbury Road bakery, one of the challenges was to develop new recipes and then turn them into standards, to create those standards that would mark our territory and define what we do. That involved the breads and the flours that we use, modifying the flavours used in favourite recipes so that they taste bright and fresh, looking at the methods we use in cake baking and sking, "what if we combine these techniques to get a different effect…", really working our way through everything that we do to make sure that we understood and, perhaps more importantly, that we really liked the finish result".

above, a sprouted whole grain batard, crusted in dried Greek oregano and seeds.

The work cycle at Ottolenghi is vigorous. At 10pm, while the customers are still nattering and eating at the tables in the upstairs space, the head baker Mariusz Uszakiewicz arrives at work to start preparing the breads for the following day. From a stock rye leaven that is kept refreshed daily, a dough will have been prepared from that to serve as an intermediate ferment to make the breads with. So a small amount of the stock rye leaven will be turned into a combination of other doughs that, in turn, will ferment an even larger batch of dough for baking. This way the amount of stock leaven can be kept small, yet produce through one 12 hour and one 6 hour stage a large amount of bread. Also, a refreshment after 12 hours (rather than 24) will give more vigour to the leaven prior to mixing the final dough.

The breads are all made using a selection of organic flours from Shipton Mill, mixed slowly in small batches, and baked directly on the oven sole. Other than the mixer, or shaping and scaling is done by hand, and by the time the pastry chefs arrive in the kitchen at 7am the bread work is nearing completion. Then the dough lamination starts, the morning items like croissants and Danish pastries that have slowly been rising during the night (so that the delicate layers of butter are preserved without melting) are baked in a hot oven, that makes the dough flake with the steam released from the butter. And a little after 8am the shop windows are starting to bulge with hot baked food, and the air is sweet with the smell of coffee and good things.

I tell Jim that some people can't imagine how a business can afford to employ bakers, people who are dedicated to baking bread. "I think that it's not a question of whether or not we can afford it or not", says Jim, "we're a bakery and we believe freshly mixed, shaped and baked bread is something we have to have, to create breads for the restaurant, to have fantastic breads for the restaurant and the shop for sale as we try to promote better bread throughout the area, and get people to buy better bread. The cost of breadmaking is like the rates we pay, or our electricity. Baking bread gives our business energy, and we need to make sure the money is there to pay for it". But the money has to come from somewhere, I ask. How do you allocate the cost within the company?

"The cost can be spread between the restaurant sales in the evening, the lunch revenue and the revenue from the bakery shop in the morning and throughout the day. We make it viable in that way". I ask whether the customers notice? "Hmm. I'd like to think so", says Jim. We haven't had enough feedback yet to be able to tell for sure. But I'd like to think so. We sell everything we make and that's a good sign"..cont below

clockwise, from top left: squares of olive oil focaccia; house-made preserves sit in jars on the table; tomato-oil brushed croutons; a selection of wines available to drink at the table.

(cont. from above) Around 8am the chef get in to prepare the salads, grills and roasted dishes for lunch, and to prepare the dishes for the evening that take more time. The far end of the building is taken up with stovetops and the restaurant kitchen, meeting in the middle of the space where the large Eurofours bread oven (like all of the baking equipment supplied by Les Nightingale at Beam Baking Systems) is used by all bakers and chefs, in use almost constantly 24 hours a day. For many bakery businesses, the capital cost for a large bakery oven becomes very difficult to justify if all you're going to do is bake bread at 6am in the morning. But at Ottolenghi, because the oven is used it for different things throughout the day, it generates enough revenue to justify that initial expense.

"We're really happy with the oven", says Jim, "and the use we're getting from it. All the breads look great, and having such a powerful heat and even heat at everyone's disposable is such an important thing in a bakery, or for that matter, any business where your serving freshly cooked food daily"

above, deliveries go on through the day, to restaurants, bars, and other retail customers.

I ask how life is having the pastry section and the bread baking in the same area? "Having the bakers and pastry chefs together works very well", says Jim. "Bringing the bakers into the same section as the patisserie, getting them to work with other people, other materials and other crafts, gives something to the bakers and their work. So that they see other things going on around them, rather than being secluded in their own little world nocturnal world" But what about the flour everywhere - bakers are notorious for trashing a clean kitchen with flour, which is often a problem for pastry chefs. "I don't see big problems there. Baking is a messy thing, and there is a lot of flour flying around. We keep on top of it and when it's ok, it's fine".

Do the pastry chefs want to do baking shifts at night; will there be a crossover? "Yeah, they all want to bake now", Jim laughs. "That's another thing that's happened. Having bakers making natural leaven breads here excites the staff, creating a situation where all of the pastry chefs want to learn the bread methods we use, and the bakers want to learn the pastry work. Mariusz and the other bakers are very interested in all of the pastry now, and that's something really good that has come out of the combined use of the space. Mixing the two has encouraged a common interest in different areas of food preparation".

Ottolenghi
287 Upper Street
London
N1 2TZ
Tel 020 7288 1454
www.ottolenghi.co.uk
upper@ottolenghi.co.uk