A day in the bakery

The CEO of Seven Seeded David Dwek wanted a journal about the goings on at the bakery so invited me to spend time with the people who keep the dough rising.  I don a sheer white coat like Doc from Back to the Future and head over to the mixing section.

Everyone dreams of having their own bakery says Andy, the master mixer, nominated in the rising star category, at this year’s Baking Industry awards. Aged twenty one, Andy appears wise beyond his years. He’s diligently spending time in all aspects of the bakery but at the moment he has found his home in mixing.  It’s not a job you can do hung over. Nor a job where you can daydream about what you’re doing after work. Mixing gigantic vats of dough is physically-taxing, and being precise with the measurements, require intense mental concentration. To put it bluntly – if you f*ck up the whole bakery grinds to a halt, and there’s a lot of waste. Andy flinches at this last word. He hates waste.

Seven Seeded has as many stories as it does products. (250 and counting). When the Venezuelan president Hugo Chavez stole Jose’s clothes business, he thought why don’t I retrain in something I love – bread! Now Jose heads up the pastry section, alongside Luke – a runaway from the Savoy hotel – who came to Seven Seeded for the career progression. It’s midday and Luke calls out for volunteers to roll mini-croissants. People duck behind crates as if they’ve been asked to clean the toilets. Apparently rolling mini-croissants is notoriously fiddly. Not for Lazlo. His small dexterous hands are equally adept at rolling pastries and plucking a guitar. Lazlo has worked part-time at Seven Seeded since he was fourteen, balancing it with college and playing in bands. Whilst rolling mini pain-au chocolates at a speed that defies human capacity, Lazlo tell me heavy metal is his music of choice. But he rarely inflicts it on colleagues. At the moment we’re listening to an electronic dance number. The beat serves as a drum making the pastry section pastry section feel efficient and focused.  Lazlo moves onto mini-croissants and because I’m sick of standing about like a lemon with a hairnet, I start stretching the dough and then rolling. When I’m not looking Lazlo rapidly redoes my work. I ask if there are every any arguments in the pastry sections. No, according to Lazlo. This is especially impressive given that one of Lazlo’s colleagues is his mum.

All workplaces are ripe for relationships, but Seven Seeded has mothers and sons, husbands and wives, and even secret yet to be announced fiancées. As the work is physical, one assumes the workforce would be young, but in the packing section I notice it’s a multi-generational affair, with staff aged from teen to late vintage. George was headhunted out of retirement by the CEO David. A Ghanian born baker who’s lived in Kensal Rise since 1975,  George became enthusiastic about returning to work, because his Freedom pass enabled the travel to Watford.  Widowed and recently re-married George puts in more hours packing boxes than any other employee. Please god I’ll have this man’s energy in my mature years.

I’ve been standing less than an hour, doing no baking, but I’m tired and peckish so I sit in the office and eat a pistachio pain au chocolate. Gary, the head baker and his team are trying to improve the recipe, so there’s lot of different pistachio pain-au-chocolates on offer. It would be rude to not throw my two penny’s worth in. So I try them all and they all taste…uniformly delicious. Like fine wine, discerning between pastries needs its own expert palate. The passion which Gary and David share for bread is obsessive. At one of David’s recent parties, instead of serving desert, he showered guests with loaves of sourdough.

After I can eat no more pistachio I waddle out and meet Becky. Becky is expecting a baby in September, and takes a break from packing to sit and put labels on carrot cake boxes. If the energy in the mixing room is macho, the energy in this task is mindful. Becky is a long-timer at the bakery, but has had a stint working away in the middle, which only made her want to come back to Seven Seeded for good. In her words, ‘I may not be here for a long time but I’m here for a good time.’

In the bakery I become very aware of time. How time can create or ruin bread. The time-pressures on deliveries. The fact the bakery never sleeps.  In offices you can steal time by taking unofficial breaks to doomscroll. I wander back over to the mixing section and watch Kaarchi stretch the focaccia. Nine years and counting at Seven-Seeded, this beast of a baker radiates strength and good-humour. When Kaarchi isn’t looking, Daniel his boss sneakily puts a jug of oil on the scales so Kaarchi is confused by the new weight of the bread. Amidst this highly niche banter, the pace never lets up. I don’t see any dawdling between stations. Quick feet. Quicker Hands. And although nobody is performing, watching a baker stretch focaccia is completely spellbinding. After my reverie is broken I remember to ask about the tedium & the monotony. For example how many thousand brioches has Elio rubbed in semolina since he started a year ago?  He shudders for a moment then smiles.  The young Italian, married with a toddler, still prefers this work to his old job in construction. Unlike Andy, Elio’s job enables daydreaming. It’s meditative work. Bhuddist bakers could be a thing.

One could pigeonhole a lot of baking as grunt work, precise grunt-work, but grunt-work nonetheless…and yet when Kaarchi throws down the flour on the work-top, the flourish of his wrist makes me think of someone throw dice at a craps game.  I am of course romanticizing real work, but as someone who has rarely done any manual labour allow me to be even more pretentious. When Kaarchi throws folds a sourdough…I feel I’m in the presence of something ancient and primal. I am no longer in Watford in 2025. Kaarchi and Seven-Seeded have transported me back to 10,000 BC when man first made bread.