Welcome to Get Baked, our series dedicated to a day in the life of a baker. From the 4am starts to hauling sacks of flour into the mixer, baking is hard and physically taxing work, but can be creatively rewarding. We talk to bakers and pastry chefs about why they live for the rise.

“I worked so hard to climb to the top of the ladder but realised I didn’t want my own restaurant like I had initially set out to do,” Edwards admits. “I’ve always romanticised about the idea of bakeries and was worried about how monotonous baking could be.” 

Toklas Bakery’s head baker Janine Edwards started her career as a chef before she began to bake, having honed her skills at South London’s Little Bread Pedlar and the Robin Gill Group. Thanks to her experience on both sides of the industry, the South African native has developed a patience, natural intuition and knowledge of seasonality in her work. 

When a part-time job came up at Little Bread Pedlar bakery Edwards decided to make the switch. “It's a complete lifestyle change in terms of working hours and took a bit of time to get used to,” she explains. “There is something beautiful about watching the sunrise while you cycle through the empty streets to work in the morning before the city wakes up."

Judging by Edwards’s beaming face on my visit I can tell she’s in her element. She’s busy shaping jiggly sourdough loaves and carefully cradling them back into their proofing baskets. Next, she quickly moves on to measure the thickness of laminated dough with a long metal ruler and passing it back through a commercial dough roller –– you wouldn’t have guessed that she’s been at it since 5 in the morning.

“We're very lucky we have nice equipment that makes our lives a lot easier,” she laughs. “Whether it’s getting the bakes in the oven at the right time or starting another dough mix from scratch, baking is a fine balancing act and there’s only a small timeframe to get it all right.”

Currently, Toklas Bakery has around five to six different types of dough mixes on the go, which makes roughly 25 loaves a day. On the Viennoiserie side of things, there are 10 to 12 pastry varieties and flavours, but according to Edwards they’re still small-scale. She wants more people through the door so they can ramp up production but wants to prove that they can survive as a retail bakery.

“A lot of people say you need the wholesale side of things in order to do the fun stuff. Wholesale is great because you’re getting a steady income stream and can work on getting the consistency right, but it does suck all the joy out of baking because you don’t have ownership of it,” she explains. “With selling directly to the customer it allows more flexibility and creative freedom. We can put on specials, change things up and make things in smaller quantities.” 

Looking around the space, it seems like a laid-back art collective rather than a run-of-the-mill bakery. Toklas Bakery doubles as a grocer stocking vegetables, cheese, tinned and dry goods, as well as a small selection of kitchen and homewares. The space is decorated with terrazzo tiled floor, giant brutalist concrete pillars and warm wood paneling lining the walls. It’s evident that the founders of the Frieze Art festival who also own sister restaurant Toklas next door at the creative 180 Strand building have put their own stamp on the place.

“I love developing a brand new menu from scratch and the challenge of designing pastries and bringing them to life a couple of days later,” Edwards says. “I want to understand and respect tradition while working on building flavour, texture and ingredients. We use British grains, but draw inspiration from around the world.”

I spy today’s intricate and delicate bakes neatly lined up in rows upon rows behind a glass display greeting customers as soon as they walk in. Her local, but global approach to baking is evident in the produce such as laminated brioche piped with pistachio cream, English gooseberry tart, coca bread (a Catalan favourite), sour cherry crème fraîche swirls, and ham and cheese savoury pain suisse.

“Baking is such a cruel and rewarding beast,” Edwards explains. “There are good days and there are bad days. Sometimes you misjudge the temperature on the butter or the dough measurements are wrong. You can feel that something’s not right and it's frustrating when you've wasted three days working on one thing.” 

She adds: “On the flip side, when everything clicks into place and it looks and feels right. It’s such a beautiful affirming feeling, it becomes an obsession and that’s the thing that does it for me. That’s what baking is all about.”

Photography: Aria Shahrokhshahi

Toklas Bakery, 9 Surrey Street, London, WC2R 2ND