Eden Project

Meet Phil Harrison, master baker at the Eden Bakery

He’s courted croissants and dallied with dainties.  But the real love affair of Phil Harrison’s working life is the Staff of Life itself…good, old-fashioned, handmade, freshly baked bread.

‘It’s true.  I absolutely love it,’ says the recently appointed manager of the newly installed Eden Bakery. ‘Is there a better way to please people?  You take an inert product, flour, and, using your hands, turn it into a living product. Then you share it.

‘I just love a new loaf.  My favourite food of all.  I love it fresh out of the oven, just warming down. Nothing on it.  No butter – it doesn’t need it.  It tastes beautiful and it is lovely food for the eye, too. As a baker I make many other things but of everything that comes out of the oven, that’s it for me. Bread is The One.’

The youngest of seven children, growing up in Derbyshire Phil got in the baking habit at home with his parents, who taught all the family the rudiments of cookery. They moved to Cardigan in West Wales, where Phil became a baker at the age of 17.  He spent the next 20 years honing his craft at two bakeries in the town.

He says: ‘When I started out as an apprentice in the early 1980s,  there was nothing bought in to the shop at all. Everything was baked from scratch. I found I had a real passion for the job and would bake everything –  pies, cakes, sweetbreads, and of course, bread.  I’d start at midnight and work through til 10 or 12 the following day.  You have to love a job to do that.’

Three years ago, Phil upped sticks with his own young family and went to live in Spezet, Brittany, where he worked in a traditional artisan bakery in the middle of the village.

‘The experience revitalised me and re-ignited my passion,’  he says.  ‘It was back to basics.  Whereas in England, most bakeries have moved on to modern machinery,  France is still very rustic. Dough is molded by hand instead of machinery, which was how I was brought up in my first bakery. The bread is baked to a harder crust.  It is subtly different.’

When he saw Eden’s advert for a new Bakery Manager, he believed that his experience of traditional baking in Britain and France would enable him to rise to the challenge in a region with its own fine baking traditions.

Eden recently teamed up with Clive Cobb of Town Mill Bakery in Lyme Regis to radically re-invent the way food is prepared, cooked and presented in the main eating area between the Biomes.  The new Eden Bakery brings food as theatre to the thousands who pour into it.  Eden’s bakers are now working 24 hours a day to make sure the traditionally cooked food is fresh from the oven.

The signature loaf  of the Eden Bakery is a big, light brown, hard-crusted campagne similar to those Phil baked in France, and made with a mix of white, wholemeal and rye flour.  It’s nearest British counterpart is the trusty, crusty bloomer (or Swansea Loaf in Wales, where he learned his trade).

‘We are going back to traditional baking methods with sourdoughs and sponges and working with real food. It has got to be a top-quality product. We are using the French model of baking three times a day. It is a 24-hour operation,’ says Phil, who now heads a team of 10 bakers at Eden.

He adds: ‘It’s an exciting challenge. Everything will be made on site, with bread made through the night and into the day. Visitors will be able to see and smell the whole process, and then taste it for themselves.’

Though he has a big team to manage, Phil will be hands-on: ‘I’ll be kneading the dough and baking bread,’ he says. ‘It’s my passion, bread.  It’s what I love to do.’

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• Food

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Bakery, Flood, Food