The bakery that opens at five so the bus drivers get breakfast
Flour & Fern on Station Road bakes through the night and sells its first loaves before the sun is up. We spent a morning behind the counter.
Ruby Ainsworth
·
·
6 min read
Thursday’s sourdough, out of the oven by half past five.
At 4:45am the only lit window on Station Road belongs to Flour & Fern. Inside, Priya and Dan Holloway have been baking since one. By five, when they unlock the door, there are already two bus drivers from the depot waiting outside.
‘They were our first regulars and they’re still our best,’ says Priya. ‘We didn’t plan to open this early. We just kept getting knocks on the window from people who could smell the bread.’
A bakery built backwards
The couple opened in 2023 in what used to be a dry cleaner’s. They had one deck oven, a second-hand mixer and enough savings for six months. The plan was a weekend sourdough stall. Instead, the depot shift change turned it into a weekday business almost overnight.
Now they bake around 300 loaves a day, plus cardamom buns, sausage rolls and a cheese and onion pasty that has started its own small argument on the town’s community page about whether it’s better than the one at the market.
What to order
The Station loaf, a white sourdough with a dark crust, £4.20
Cardamom buns, made from Wednesday to Saturday, £2.80
The cheese and onion pasty, £3.50, gone by ten on Saturdays
Filter coffee from 5am, £1.80, refills free if you’re in uniform
The shop closes at 2pm, or earlier when the bread runs out. Priya says it runs out most days. ‘People ask why we don’t bake more. The honest answer is we’d like to sleep at some point.’
About the writer
Ruby Ainsworth
Food and drink
Eats her way round Brantwick so you don’t have to guess. Pays for every meal she writes about and never tells the kitchen she’s coming.
The Friday email