E5 Bakehouse: Something to boast about

Bread tends to get bad press these days. In a city of binge drinking, heavy smoking, late nights, long working hours, and few jobs, the culprit everyone points their fingers at is bread. You’re tired: too much bread! Depressed: it’s the wheat in your diet. Feeling uneasy – probably best to switch to a salad for lunch.

This always seems a bit unfair. Bread is of course one of the most wholesome, reliable, flexible, comforting and outright tasty foodstuffs going. Therefore, I would encourage everyone to ditch their salads and head out to the E5 Bakehouse.

Sitting boho and cute in Hackney’s trendy London Fields locality, the E5 Bakehouse is a bit too good to be true. Setting out with earnest neo-hippy aims, the focus is on the local, the organic and the artisan. All the bread is not just hand made but hand crafted, and baked at sunrise each day. The ingredients are all pesticide free and sourced from local mills (which apparently do exist in East London). Even the coffee comes from an East-end roaster. And all produce is delivered by bicycle.

The shop itself is small – a place to pop into and buy your bread rather than a coffee shop to linger in. There is, however, a small takeaway counter selling teas, coffees, cakes and sandwiches – notably the cheese sandwich dubbed by Timeout as ‘The Best Cheese Sandwich in London.’

The breads themselves are something to boast about. The textures are sensational – the perfect mix of moistness, springiness and flavours. To put it simply; it’s one of those experiences that brings home the shoddiness of our supermarket food culture. There is a broad range of breads to choose from including the dark molasses based Bordinsky loaf, the raisin and walnut and the low in gluten spelt bread.

These days, no independent business would be complete without offering classes in their trade. Between 11am and 5.30 on Saturdays, the E5 Bakehouse open their secrets to the public and give instruction in the weighing, kneading, shaping and baking required to produce the perfect loaf. These are conducted by either owner Ben MacKinnon or head baker Eyal Schwartz. At £95 they aren’t for the faint-pocketed, but this includes the making of 4 loaves and feedback from those who’ve taken the plunge is excited and positive.

Regardless of how far you want to engage in the art of bread making, the E5 Bakehouse is well worth a stop if you’re headed east for a Saturday of vitamin drinks and falafel.


E5 Bakehouse
Arch 395
Mentmore Terrace
London E8 3PH

[email protected]

020 8525 2890

http://e5bakehouse.com/