Anticipating Thursday night’s release from our loaf-less lockdown, I’ve dedicated this page to my favourite carb and a couple of star bakers:

Charlotte Clif Aybes – Charlotte’s Sourdough

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Charlotte's Sourdough

Charlotte Clif Aybes runs a fabulous kosher sourdough micro-bakery in NW4. Had there been any large-scale agriculture in north-west London, the kosher bread-eating community might have been worse off.

“I always wanted to be a farmer,” admits Charlotte, aka Charlotte’s Sourdough. The Hendon-based baker has long had an interest in the natural world. “My degree (from Manchester University) is in zoology, and I have a Master’s in wildlife conservation from University of Greenwich,” she tells me as we sit in her living room, an aging Labrador snoozing at her feet.

She was working in conservation in outer London when she and husband Rami started their family 22 years ago — “I stopped when my eldest daughter, who now 21 years old, was born.” They have added four children to their family — three more daughters and adopted son, Eli. The busy household includes two cats and a flock of hens in the garden.

Many of her local community know her best for her home micro-bakery — a business that evolved gradually from her joint passions for food and the planet. “I started growing my own produce and got into fermenting to preserve the surplus,” she says, explaining that over the years she would make kefir (fermented milk) and sauerkraut. Her interest in fermentation led her to start baking sourdough bread, which, five years ago, turned into a business. “I’d been making sourdough for years, I was gifting it and people used to ask if I would make it regularly for them to buy. Then a friend catering an event asked me to bake bread for it, and that was the kickstart.”

She created a WhatsApp group to broadcast what would be available and that now has an audience of more than 1,000. “I haven’t done any marketing, other than on the children’s school calendars.” The business has grown organically, with her kosher status creating a niche for her — now formalised by her kosher certification by the Sephardi Kashrut Authority (SKA).

“They approached me. I just had to do a herb checking course and they visit and do spot checks. Each bake I make the blessing on a piece of my dough, which I throw away. People ask for me to pray for them as they know I make so many blessings.”

She wasn’t raised in the Orthodox world — “I lived in the heart of Golders Green but had a very secular upbringing” — but her parents were foodies.

“We ate foods growing up in the 1980s that would at that time have been considered weird and wacky. My Dad wouldn’t even allow minced meat in the house — he’d mince it himself. There was no junk food allowed.”

She became more observant after marrying  — “Rami wanted me to keep a kosher home. I didn’t know what that entailed, so I started going to shiurim to learn about my heritage. It grew from there.”

As well as sourdough made from a range of grains, her focaccia — topped with perfectly caramelised vegetables — is a must and for the sweet-toothed, cinnamon rolls and babka are beyond delicious. And it’s all organic. Orders are collected from her NW4  micro-bakery, or, for a fee, can be delivered to certain postcodes.

@charlottessourdough

Aaron Kossoff – Kossoff’s

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Kossoffs bakery

At his Kentish Town baker and café, Aaron Kossoff makes possibly the best breakfast pastries — croissants with endless, crisp layers surrounding a soft, chewy centre. His bakes aren’t kosher, but his heritage is unquestionable.

“My great-grandfather, Wolf Kossoff, was a refugee from Kyiv in the 1920s and his first job here was selling two-day-old bread in the East End. Bakers would give it to him to sell to immigrants. He was a trained baker going on to start his own business, which grew to four kosher bakeries in the East End and Stamford Hill.”

Aaron’s father — born above a bakery in Bethnal Green — followed in Wolf’s floury footsteps, opening bakeries in north London, which is where Aaron’s passion for bread was ignited.

“When I was five, I helped rolling the bagels and frying doughnuts.” After a history degree at Westminster University, he trained as a chef at London’s Le Cordon Bleu — which included patisserie skills — and went on to work in a series of restaurant including The Ivy, the Soho House group and the Ottolenghi restaurants. He rose to a head-office role in the production kitchen for all their bakeries. “That role made me what I am today — it was hard but I learned the most I’ve learned today from Yotam Ottolenghi, Sami Tamimi and the other directors there.”

After a stint at small Bermondsey bakery Little Bread Pedlar (“I’d got as far as I could as a chef — you need to keep moving and evolving yourself”) he started at Honey & Co just before the pandemic hit. He was already looking for sites for his own bakery with brother Alex, who looks after the administrative side of the business.

They picked a spot on Kentish Town’s main high street — “I live in Camden so it was around the corner” — and just over 100 years after their grandfather had opened his doors, the Kossoff brothers, together with Aaron’s pastry chef partner, Joanna Clarke, shared their sourdough loaves and pastries with the NW5’s locals.

Although he has not yet started selling challah nor bagels that may well be in their future — “We never anticipated any interest in this area but want to eventually when we’ve grown our baking team. I’ll definitely use my father’s challah and bagel recipes.” He already produces an apple cake that is a family heirloom and says his orange cake is a slightly adapted recipe from another one.

Although the Askhenazi canon formed a large part of his childhood food memories, there were also flavours inspired from his (Muslim) mother’s Indian heritage — “My grandfather was from Calcutta, so we were brought up on a lot of Indian food. We celebrated the Jewish festivals as well as the Muslim ones.”

Other than world-class croissants, expect to find crisp baguettes; chewy sourdough and pillowy focaccia topped with a range of sweet, caramelised vegetables plus a range of lunchtime salads and locally roasted coffee.

Instagram: @kossoffs