The North East has long been home to a rich culinary heritage, but now its bakeries are taking centre stage on the national stage – with two of its bakeries earning top honours at the National Bakery Awards 2024.
Walking into Northern Rye, the aroma of freshly baked pastries fills the air. Robbie Livingstone, the owner, greets me warmly. “Would you like a coffee as well?” he says, placing a freshly baked tiramisu cruffin – a delicate pastry blending the best of a croissant and a muffin, with a coffee, caramel, and molasses cream filling – in front of me.
With flour-dusted hands and a passion for their craft, today, Northern Rye and Bread and Roses are basking in the glory of their hard-earned achievements. At the National Bakery Awards 2024, Northern Rye earned the title of “Best Bakery in Tyne & Wear,” recognised for its high-quality ingredients and fermentation techniques in artisan breads and viennoiserie. Meanwhile, Bread and Roses was named “Best Bakery in Northumberland,” known for its exceptional artisan loaves and commitment to organic ingredients.
Northern Rye additionally won the coveted award for “Best Bakery in the North East” this year, after previously winning this award in 2023.
The National Bakery Awards, hosted by Bakery Business Magazine, celebrates the best bakeries across the UK and honours both regional and national winners.
Robbie describes Northern Rye’s journey as a labour of love. Known for its perfectly crusted sourdough and inventive flavour combinations – from olive and coriander ciabatta rolls to pan de muerto – the bakery has cultivated a loyal clientele since its debut in 2017. But Northern Rye is far from just another bakery – it’s a hub of creativity and tradition, combining time-honoured techniques with bold, modern flavours to create a truly unique experience.
Northern Rye is no stranger to experimentation. Their innovative take on pastries has seen the creation of unique cruffins that combine rich, buttery layers with exciting flavour twists. Among their creations are the Mont Blanc cruffin, and the cherry cheesecake with pistachio shortbread cruffin, along with a variety of seasonal flavours, each one a testament to their dedication to craftsmanship and creativity in the bakery.
In Alnwick, Bread and Roses has become a cornerstone of the artisan bread community since its opening in 2010. Following his redundancy as a bakery lecturer at Newcastle College, Andrew Smith founded the company from a woodfire oven in his home, selling his bread at farmers’ markets. “I was a one-person band,” Andrew says of the start of Bread and Roses. Although primarily wholesale, their baked goods are additionally sold at Hexham and Morpeth farmers’ markets, which Andrew values for the direct connection with customers. “I’ve deliberately not put all my eggs into one basket,” he says.
Robbie’s story at Nothern Rye sings a similar song, as his redundancy from a long career in the print trade was what sparked his enrollment in a baking course at the School of Artisan Food in 2016. Just a year later, Robbie and his wife Alex began Northern Rye from the kitchen of their flat and started selling through pop-up stalls.
The accolades come at a time of renaissance for the artisanal baking industry, with sales of bread and pastries in the UK continuing to rise, driven by consumer demand for authenticity and quality. “The best walk in bakery in Newcastle upon Tyne,” one customer shares in a Google review. “Just when you think you have tried it all, Northern Rye comes along and sets the bar”.
Yet, both bakeries acknowledge the challenges of maintaining traditional methods amidst mass-production, plant baking. At Bread and Roses, the commitment to craftsmanship is evident in every loaf, especially their signature sourdough which involves a painstaking process that spans 60 hours.
“We work on the traditions of retained heat, of solid heat, that we build into the oven,” Andrew explains. “It’s the timescale and the flexibility that allows us to have total control over the process”. While mass-production bakeries often rely on machinery and faster methods to meet high demand, Bread and Roses stays true to the art of breadmaking, which is what continues to set Bread and Roses apart in a market dominated by quicker, less personalised approaches to baking.
Northern Rye’s approach to bread-making is grounded in respect for its origins. As Robbie explains, the “bakers begin their days at 4 a.m.,” to allow the dough to prove for 16 to 28 hours for full flavour and aroma. This commitment to traditional methods, combined with high-quality ingredients like Wildfarmed Flour and sustainable butter, reflects Northern Rye’s dedication to creating exceptional products.
The journey doesn’t stop here for either bakery. Northern Rye is set to expand its reach with a new bakery opening in Harbour House, North Shields, while Andrew excitedly showed me Bread and Roses’ nomination for England’s Business Awards 2025.
As the aroma of freshly baked bread continues to waft through Newcastle’s streets, it’s clear that the region’s baking scene is only just beginning to rise.
Transcription
I started the company as a result of the education cuts in 2010. So there was wholesale redundancies at Newcastle College, and I was lecturing in the hospitality department as a bakery lecturer.
So we do all artisan, we don’t use any additives, they’re banned.
We work on the traditions of retained heat, of solid heat.
They’re all my recipes that I’ve gathered.
I’ve worked with plant bakers, but it’s not really my style because it’s all automated. Once you push the button, you’re going to have bread, you know, two and a half hours down the line that’s pretty much about ready to be sliced and put into bags, and the amount of control that you’ve got over that plant as it as it progresses is virtually nil, whereas we’re working on sourdoughs with a 60 hour process.
We’re primarily wholesale, but obviously we do Hexam and Morpeth farmers markets, and they’re kind of like, really, really important to me because that’s when I’m out and about in front of customers.
But what I find is you don’t grow it by going out and getting accounts, you grow it from gathering a reputation that people come to you to want to buy the bread.
Could you tell me a bit more about your win at the National Bakery Awards?
I wasn’t aware of what had happened until I got an email saying “Congratulations, you’ve won the county award,” but I’ve got a lot of time for it because they are the baking industry.
It was really great. Actually, I was really, really pleased about that.
Northern Rye’s Harbour House bakery is scheduled to open at the beginning of 2025. To vote for Bread and Roses for England‘s Business Awards 2025, visit Business Awards.
Have you tried any of Northern Rye or Bread and Roses’ baked goods? Leave me a reply!
So interesting and informative! I had never heard of Northern Rye bakery until this article, but I will definitely be visiting!
I definitely recommend their tiramisu cruffin if you get the chance to try!