This is a very 2011 story in that it starts with a tweet. Stephen Fry, comedian, alumnus of Cambridge University and stalwart of Twitter posted this…

"Feb 09 2011 @stephenfry  No! No! Say it ain't so - not Fitzbillies? Why I tweeted a pic of one of their peerless Chelsea buns but a sixmonth ago"

It was a 140-character grenade that would change our lives in half a year.

My wife, Al, grew up in Cambridge. She had her 21st birthday cake, a vast croquembouche, ordered from Fitzbillies and, like Stephen Fry she knew the place as a 90-year-old Cambridge institution, a Grade II listed art deco frontage on a tea shop and bakery that prided itself on selling generations of students the world's stickiest Chelsea buns. Now, when we followed the link to the local paper at the bottom of the tweet, we saw that it had shut its doors as recession had forced it out of business.

Al: "Did you see the tweet?"

Me: "I did. Terribly sad. Awful how places like that are going…"

Al: "I've called the agents. We're going to view it on Monday."

For thousands of high street businesses, closing down is ugly. When the bailiffs arrived at Fitzbillies they asked the customers to leave, gave the staff a few minutes to assemble their possessions, took their keys and then led them out of the building. Over the years the business had been retreating inside its shell. Sure, the cake shop thrived but everything else had suffered from the lack of cash. Equipment hadn't been maintained, the staff hadn't been paid and, justifiably lacking motivation, had let everything slip.

A local estate agent had been appointed to handle the reassignment of the lease by the landlords, Pembroke College. The business itself, its equipment, goodwill and, we were about to discover, its name, were in the hands of the Official Receiver. I'd had a little experience in catering. I'd spent a chunk of my youth working in kitchens in seaside towns in the UK and in diners and dives in the US, but that was decades ago. The idea of fighting to pick up the pieces of a business that had been on the slide for years, on a provincial high street and on the lip of a recession, seemed ridiculous but Al's enthusiasm was so consuming I had to support it. There were, after all, around 200 separate individuals and organisations expressing an interest, we had almost no chance of getting through and, in truth, it seemed better for us both to let the natural course of things crush this insane idea rather than me.

We lashed together a document expressing interest. Once we'd set down Al's experience as strategy director of a big group of marketing companies, her connection to the town, my profile as a food writer and some entirely speculative figures, the idea didn't look quite as ridiculous as I'd thought.

Two days later, Al called. "We're down to the last four candidates. We've got about a fortnight to get a full business plan together."

Monday 28 February

The next fortnight is frenzied. I'm unbelievably lucky, in this case, to have a contacts book that covers some of the most helpful people in the industry. Thomas Blythe, general manager at the St John restaurant group is a great friend who has "worked every station" in the catering world. He sits at our dining table and dictates for an unbroken hour the astonishing list of things we'll have to think about. Laundry, staff training, blasting out grease traps, deliveries, premises licenses, recycling, till systems, insurance, late-night fridge emergencies, visits from the environmental health officer, taking credit cards. Next is Gerry Moss, career baker and now accounts director at Gail's Artisan Bakery. Gerry's list includes shop layouts, display, coffee machines, bakery equipment, stock control, uniforms and a couple of hundred other things. Then Dan Hopwood, friend, interior designer and, most usefully, a trained architect. Within minutes Dan is sketching out ways the dead spaces can be opened, lightened and made useful.

The business takes shape. I'm not great with money but Al is. Her business model looks, on paper, genuinely doable. We're going to need to raise at least six figures to do the renovation work but the potential earnings, once the business is brought to a reasonable level of efficiency, make that manageable. It's here, though, that a new realisation hits us: there is no way we'd be able to do this remotely. We'd need to be on site all day, every day. We also realise that if we let our London house and rent in Cambridge, we'd have enough surplus income to buffer the first crucial years of the new business. Suddenly, it looks like we are moving.

Al is more than ready to quit London, but I grew up in the burbs and couldn't wait to move to the big city. I've been a partisan Londoner all my adult life. Can I let that go? What about our daughter, Liberty? She's eight and loves her friendly local school in Camden Town. How will she handle the change?

Friday 11 March

We're led through the imposing arches of Pembroke College for an interview with the bursar. Chris Blencowe is a no-nonsense, ex-air commodore now responsible for running the 660-year-old college and its estates. Al is armed with beautifully bound and illustrated business plans. If things go right today, this should be the last time she'll ever have to use Microsoft Powerpoint – so she's made damn sure it's a good one. I'm carrying a Bakewell tart. It sounds an absurd thing to take to a meeting, but if we do this it's going to be all about great food made from scratch. If they don't "get" the Bakewell, this isn't going to work anyway.

Chris and his team go at the business plan like management consultants but in the end… they smile.

We're deep in negotiation with the Official Receiver. There's also the vexed matter of the secret recipe for the signature Chelsea bun. Apparently it's not part of the deal with the receiver, it's in the head of the ex-head baker, Gill Abbs, who with 40 years of experience cooking the 50 or so lines of baked goods in the shop window, was quickly snapped up by a big local commercial bakery. Unless we can do something about recovering the traditional recipes we're going to be selling cupcakes.

Tuesday 17 May

I start thinking about menus for savoury food. Our research keeps turning up comments that "there's nowhere decent to eat in Cambridge". I find that difficult to understand but this isn't an ordinary town. The academics – those with much of the disposable income and inclination to eat out – eat high quality food from their own college kitchens so the town's few fine dining establishments are in direct competition with High Table. There are plenty of chain joints catering to students and their visiting parents, but a couple of years ago Cambridge was named "Clone Town" when researchers discovered that there were more chains per head of population than anywhere else in the UK. That accusation seems to have really stung people here.

We need to run a proper lunch service – and eventually dinner, too – to make the place work financially: but we're going to need to choose our food carefully. The town wants it to be non-chain, the students need it affordable, I want it to be British, tradition and the brand demand it should fit in with the original feel of the bakery. I make lists of pies, big roasts done slowly in the dying heat of the baker's oven, soups and savouries. It's fun. Unlike arguing with the council about drains.

I also take a long and sobering look at myself. I'm proud that I started my career in frontline catering, that back in the day I could swing the pans, flash the knives and keep 20 tickets in my head at once, but in truth, the last time I put on whites was 28 years and four stone ago. We're going to need a chef.

Gerry and Thomas come with us to visit the site again as we plan layouts, positions for waiter stations and where the new kitchen kit will fit. Thomas brings with him an old friend, Rosie Sykes, a phenomenal chef who's now well advanced in her own secret project for a restaurant in Cambridge. Al and I know we're going to have trouble attracting a good chef and it's galling to realise that the perfect candidate, currently helping us site the sinks and extractor hoods, is going to be the competition in a month.

Al gets a call from Gill, the head baker at the old Fitzbillies. Things aren't working out at the big bakery and she's quit with no job to go to. Can we talk? We drop everything for a meeting the same day.

We warm to Gill instantly. She's gentle, charming and fiercely proud of her craft skills. Al turns the conversation to cakes, and shared enthusiasm takes over. Within moments they are deep in the arcana of pastry and sugarcraft. It seems we may have a baker.

Thursday 14 July

Rosie's own restaurant plans had hung on protracted and painful negotiations around a spectacular building, which have finally ground to an agonising impasse. We're, of course, gutted that a friend has had her plans thwarted but it's hard to hide our glee when she agrees to join us. She brings with her Tim, a soft-spoken south Londoner with Robert Smith hair and a dab hand with terrines and pâtés. A couple of days later as I'm screwing on the new table tops, Jack walks in off the street. I'm getting used to these "walk-ins" now. I've had a couple of lovely old people come in and share their recollections of the place in the 1930s, a deranged looking woman who harangued me about the colour of the tiles, and one bloke who tried to walk off with my powersaw. Jack is a little different. He "likes the look of the place", "might be interested in doing a few shifts". "Do you have much experience?" I ask. "I used to run my own place, then worked at Rose Bakery in Paris and Chez Panisse," comes the reply. I put down my screwdriver to shake hands.

Monday 18 July

Liberty goes to stay with her grandparents while Al and I move everything to the house we've rented in Cambridge. Most of the boxes are dumped in the right rooms and we head straight to the bakery. In the two days that we've been packing, they've discovered an old lintel that doesn't quite reach across the door it's supposed to protect so there's nothing but a 400-year-old prayer holding up the top three floors.

They've also opened the main grease trap – something that should be done at least twice a year for routine cleaning – and discovered it blocked with a wheelbarrow-full of congealed fat and rotting food waste. The smell is sickening so we clear the site. As we shovel the matter into bags the phone rings, it's a PR from London who has just read about our efforts and effusively congratulates me on "living the dream". I guess I am, but at this very moment I'm fighting the urge to vomit.

A couple of days later I find myself bolt awake at 3am. I really am "living the dream" but I'm approaching 50 like a runaway truck and I'm too focused on ticking off the next thing on the to-do list to appreciate any of it. Big phases of my life are changing for the better but have I stopped, thought, celebrated? Where was the champagne?

I feel unaccountably angry with Al. She works incredibly hard. We've always relied on each other through the ups and downs of our individual careers but now the one person I should be able to turn to about all this is working even harder than I am. The following day we have a bitter, ugly row which leaves me feeling guilty and selfish. I apologise and quietly resolve to get over myself and work harder.

Thursday 18 August

The new staff arrive and begin a thorough clean as the builders pack up. The false wall protecting the kitchen comes down and after a 5.30am start I gleefully help load the very last skip. The first trays of hot Chelsea buns are coming out of the cleaned and renovated ovens and Rosie is turning out "sample" food that would make an angel weep.

Tomorrow we begin a three-day "Chelsea Bun Weekend'. The tills aren't working yet and we're not fully up to speed in the bakery but the plan is to turn out buns and tea to the people of Cambridge for a few days. The doors are to open at 10am.

At 9.30 they're already queueing along the street and around the corner…

Postscript

Fitzbillies has now been open just over two months. The cake shop and the cafe are doing brilliantly and Rosie's lunches are a success with the punters. We've just offered a job to a second chef so, by the time this goes to print, we'll be open for dinners, too. I've lost every last doubt I had about the Fitzbillies project a long time ago. Liberty got into Al's old school and loves it. Because I only met Al when she was already approaching the height of her corporate career, I've never had the chance to see her so happy. I have a one-and-a-half minute commute to work every day and I do most of my writing work (including much of this piece) on the big table in the best coffee shop in town – my own. I'm pulling more kitchen shifts than I originally planned and Christ, my body won't let me forget it. My feet and legs hurt like hell and sometimes I'm so stiff in the mornings that Liberty has to help lever me out of bed.

I work to make something that people enjoy, and at the end of the day I count a modest stack of cash and put it in the bank. We've made or saved jobs for 15 fantastic people and every day somebody comes in and thanks us… genuinely thanks us… for rescuing a beloved local institution. If that sounds like living an insane middle-class dream – it is.

But I've also met a lot of people like us in the last few months. There are a lot of life-changers out there, either jumping or being pushed from the corporate train. They've looked around for something they can do and they've found themselves small food businesses in pleasant towns. Sure, the recession is tough as hell on small businesses, but most of these people, like us, have savings they're prepared to risk when the banks won't and bring up-to-date marketing and business thinking to what has sometimes seemed an exhausted sector.

I don't believe a rash of middle-class, born-again bakers, grocers and shopkeepers is necessarily going to save every high street in the country, but they're injecting capital, innovating, saving jobs and showing all the signs of having a great time doing so. Of all the new food businesses I've met over the past year, I don't recall a single one that ever talked about an "exit strategy", nor, indeed, one who regretted their decision to quit the rat-race for a real job. Maybe this isn't a trend; maybe it's just a kind of social readjustment. After all, it was only a few decades ago when the very definition of the English middle-class was the people who owned and ran local businesses and shops.

Somebody asked me recently how it felt now I'd "put my money where my writing was" and the answer is simple. Proud, tired and very, very happy.

Fitzbillies, 52 Trumpington Street, Cambridge, CB2 1RG; 01223 352 500; fitzbillies.com