The stall’s story

Crust & Crumb is what happens when two software engineers decide that a sourdough starter named Doris matters more than a commute. Tom and Priya left their desk jobs in 2019, apprenticed themselves to a wood-fired bakery in Somerset, and now bake three mornings a week from a converted barn on the edge of the Mendips.

The flour is stoneground British wheat and rye, milled at Shipton Mill, and the loaves ferment slowly for up to eighteen hours — no baker’s yeast, no improvers, no shortcuts. That long prove is why the crumb is glossy and slightly custardy, and why the crust blisters where the steam hits it. The house loaf and the seeded malthouse are always available; Fridays add focaccia baked in the wood oven with rosemary from the garden.

Because the bakery works to a natural rhythm, the Famica listing opens on Sunday evenings for the following week’s bakes and closes when the week’s flour is allocated. It is a small, deliberately capped bakery: better to sell out than to bake a tired loaf.

Collection points run through Famica Market’s seller network, or loaves travel out by next-day post, wrapped in paper and packed to survive the journey without losing their snap.