Business at an artisan Leek bakery is booming after it was listed as one of the top 20 in the UK.
Live Love Loaf was included in a “best of” list by the Financial Times in the run-up to the first May Bank Holiday.
The bakery in the heart of Leek town centre was set up in 2014 by former bank manager Matt Booth and his wife Clare.
The FT listing is just the latest in a series of accolades recognising their passion to create “real bread” – but it came as a welcome surprise.
Matt, 37, said: “It’s really nice to get this sort of recognition from a big name in the media industry, to know we’re on their radar is quite something.
“It certainly made us very busy over the weekend, on both Friday and Saturday we’d sold out within a couple of hours of opening.”
Prized by its loyal customers for its artisan breads, pastries and cakes made on site, it has previously twice won Best Regional Bakery award for the West Midlands at the National Bakery Awards.
Before setting up their bakery Matt was working as a bank manager in Manchester and Clare, 34, was a nursery nurse.
They both enjoyed baking as a hobby and wanted to do something together.
Inspired by a local online appeal for speciality bread, they set up a home bakery in their Manchester home.
When Matt was subsequently offered voluntary redundancy by his bank the couple moved to his home town of Leek to set up a bakery business.
They entered a Dragons’ Den style competition called The Start Up, emerging as winners.
Over the years they have honed their craft and offer a range of traditional breads including multiseed loaves, baguettes, garlic focaccia, walnut and ale loaves and mozzarella, basil and stilton focaccia.
Live Love Loaf, which prides itself on avoiding artificial ingredients or enhancers, also runs bread-making courses.
Matt added: “We love what we do, we’re really passionate about creating products that are the best they can be, I can’t count the number of times we’ve tweaked recipes or changed methods to make them a little better each time.”
Seriously good. Great bread, great cafe, lovely people. A credit to our town.