The Wheatberry Bakery story
By Cassandra Bekas
My husband, Wojciech, and I met in a bakery in Brighton where he was the head baker of three and I led a team of four as head pastry chef. We were both very fortunate to have been given the opportunity and freedom to develop award-winning products for a variety of competitions including Tiptree World Bread Awards & Great Taste Awards. Fast forward three years, and not only are we newly-married, but also in a budding bakery business venture together, called Wheatberry. And, as our marriage is blossoming and maturing, so is our business. We really wanted the business to be personable, so we imparted some of ourselves into the products. On our menu features a strawberry genoise cake – this was the cake we served at our wedding reception. Then, amongst the pastries, is a babka bun, made with brioche dough and a chocolate filling straight from my Polish mother- in-law’s fountain of knowledge.
Wheatberry is an artisan bakery and patisserie that draws inspiration from French techniques. We have a deep love for laminated doughs and everything sourdough! Wojciech and I particularly love our little bakery because it operates from a converted garage at my parent’s house in Uddingston.
Our ethos is being a local bakery in every sense of the word, and our selling strategy is delivering bread and pastries to our neighbourhood as well as featuring at local food markets.
Although our business is young, we are excited to already be building relationships with innovative and creative individuals and entrepreneurs. We have confirmed a stall at Bowhouse market in September and November, which we’re very excited about as we’ll be amongst other like-minded people and get to learn more about their journeys also. For Christmas, we are collaborating with Common Coffee; a growing company focused on good coffee, without the jargon – just a common love.
In our quest for finding similar businesses like ours, we met Fiona and Jock from Woodlea Stables in Fife. We have spent many hours admiring their bread, local produce and community of local food and drink suppliers. They got us excited about being part of the bakery scene in Scotland.
Exploring businesses to collaborate with is fun because we get to meet people with different experiences. We have lots of laughs together but, beyond this, there’s a purity and honesty of product delivery. At Wheatberry, we chose to use Mungoswells flour whose wheat is grown entirely in East Lothian. We intentionally chose a local flour supplier who equally understands the importance of local products.
We put a lot of care in the making and preparing of our bread and pastries. Our hand-crafted bread goes through a long fermentation which allows for the dough to develop a full flavour and, using local Scottish flour in this process, allows for its quality to be fully celebrated and appreciated. Our business is an active supporter of the Real Bread Campaign who perfectly described real bread: “Real Bread has nothing to hide. It is made with simple, natural ingredients and NO artificial additives”. Wheatberry bread is exactly this; local Scottish flour, salt, water – nothing to hide.
We chose ‘local’ not because there isn’t good produce out there further afield, but because we want to celebrate our own! Scotland has a growing innovative and exciting food scene which we are honoured to be part of.
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