Bread Ahead, in Borough Market, is not yet a year old. But already business has exceeded even the wildest expectations of its owners. "I didn't think we'd be half this busy," says its star baker, Justin Gellatly. "It turns out that we already need a bigger oven." At Bread Ahead's stall nearby – we're in the kitchen just across the way – shoppers can't get enough of its sourdough, its 7kg Cathedral Loaves (named for Southwark Cathedral, where the company's sourdough starter was blessed) or of Gellatly's famous doughnuts, which are filled with a combination of crème patisserie and chantilly cream the better to make them just a little lighter. Even so, ask Gellatly if he'd like to "roll out" Bread Ahead across the capital and beyond, and his face moves from pleasure to mild pain. "No. You can't control the quality if you do that. I want to know that every loaf is absolutely perfect."
Gellatly made his name as a baker at St John in Clerkenwell, where he worked for 13 years. "I was a chef at the Greenhouse [in Mayfair], a fairly heavy traditional kitchen with lots of shouting and screaming. I came to St John to learn about offal for some specials I wanted to do, and by the end of the day Fergus [Henderson, St John's founding chef] had offered me a job. I didn't have a plan. I fell into baking. The first time I baked at St John, I was unloading the oven, and the bread was crackling away – it was really singing to me – and I thought: I could do this for the rest of my life." He tells me that there are "no words" to describe how supportive Henderson was. But the love is obviously mutual. "With Justin the force is strong and the crumb is good," says Henderson, plugging Gellatly's brilliant new book Bread, Cake, Doughnut, Pudding.
It was a wrench to leave St John, but Gellatly wanted the chance to do something "a bit cheeky" of his own. He and his wife Louise – they met at catering college and have been together for 24 years – wanted to work together and dreamed of a little doughnut shop somewhere. Meanwhile, they spent their time turning out croquembouches for weddings and Gellatly finished his book, a 150-strong collection of some of the most gorgeous recipes I've ever read (iced London buns, baked malt custards, treacle and walnut tart... I could go on forever). Then there came a call from a baker called Matt Jones, who'd found a site big enough for both a serious bakery and a baking school. Would Gellatly join him there? In a heartbeat, he would.
Gellatly is thrilled people have fallen for baking again, and he regards his new business as a beneficiary of their new passion. But this isn't, he thinks, a revolution quite yet. "The problem is that people are not really coming into the profession. It's hard to find good bakers. The graft puts them off. To be fair, it puts me off. At the moment, I start at midnight, and finish at midday." As for Bake Off, he has seen it only once or twice. "I think Paul Hollywood is bit unfair," he says, with surprising fierceness (Gellatly is mostly smiley and gentle). "I don't like the way he pokes at everything, and I don't think my bread would pass his test." His doughnuts, though, would cinch it. "I don't really eat them any more: you don't want to after you've made a thousand. But the other Saturday, I took five minutes and had one outside with a cup of tea. Blimey, I thought. This is good. This is really good."
