Community / ‘Baffled bakers of Bigton’ prepare for biggest expansion yet
BIGTON’S “baffled bakers” can barely believe their stratospheric word of mouth success, ahead of the business’ much wanted expansion.
The Bigton Bakery – a co-project of bakers Gus Dow and Mat Roberts – launched less than three years ago after Gus began selling baguettes firstly from his car, and then from his own South Mainland sitting room.
Now the pair are set to bring their breads, bakes and pastries even further with the creation of a new ‘bakehouse’ in Mat’s Bigton garden.
That will allow them to expand the business, with plans for a Wednesday night pop-up event in Mareel every week and the potential to bring Bigton’s bakes to local shops.
The wildly popular Bigton Bakery, which sees cars queuing outside the Hymhus hall every Saturday morning, will also continue.
Shetland News visited as the second of two containers were delivered to Mat’s house this afternoon, which will be combined to become a bakehouse in the coming months.
The pair can scarcely believe the speed of their success, and where it is now set to take them.
“We call ourselves the ‘baffled bakers of Bigton’,” Mat quipped.
“It just keeps growing and growing,” Gus added.
“As it’s kept growing, we’ve realised we needed to get a bigger place.
“About six months ago we started to realise we were at capacity, that this was the maximum we could do unless we got a bigger premises.
“We can’t rent a bakery and there’s not any industrial places we could go here, so I wondered ‘could we get a container?’
“Mat was like, ‘yeah we could, and we could put it in my garden’.”
Incredibly both Mat and Gus currently carry out all the baking for their hugely successful Hymhus endeavour in their own kitchens, every single week.
Mat joked that their families “just want their kitchens back”, and were delighted to see them united under own roof for the first time.
Bigton Bakery started after Gus upgraded his home equipment by buying a £1,500 bakers oven on eBay, with his brother lending him the money for it.
He said he had been “baking for about 10 years before that”, having decided to buy a bread maker and make his own bread at home.
“It was mostly just me watching YouTube videos and working how to make bread,” he said.
However he then moved onto selling baguettes from the back of his car after discovering a knack for it, which progressed to him baking loaves and selling them from his sitting room.
The idea then, he said, was to take the leftovers up to Hymhus and sell them to locals.
“More and more people started coming at 9.30am to my house, to the point that there were queues outside my living room,” he said.
“Cars were getting parked in my driveway, my neighbours’ driveways…and then I would be sold out and would have nothing to take to Hymhus.”
Mat meanwhile was conjuring up croissants at home, and his love of baking was enhanced when he was given a week-long course in Bath for his 60th birthday.
He went on a night class that Gus ran about baking, and having began to branch out into pain au raisins and pain au chocolat the pair decided to combine forces.
“Technically speaking you asked me,” Mat told Gus, after Gus had said the opposite.
Mat began selling his pastries from Gus’ front room too, admitting that they “annoyed the neighbours a lot because they couldn’t get out or get in”.
That led to the Bigton Bakery’s Saturday showing at Hymhus, which became an astonishing success seemingly overnight.
The pair say that they were also stunned by how quickly it spread, without any real advertising, and with both still working other jobs too.
“My son works in marketing and he said still the best thing is word of mouth,” Gus said.
“It takes longer, it’s so old fashioned, but it really works.”
Every week the pair labour over loaves like focaccia and sourdough, pastries like croissants and cinnamon rolls, and their ever popular cheese twists ahead of the Saturday rush.
For Gus, he starts making sourdough on a Tuesday – feeding it every 12 hours – and with just a teaspoon of sourdough starter, he has 5kg of baked bread by Saturday.
Mat starts making croissant dough on a Monday, laminating it the day after and then shaping and freezing it on a Wednesday.
Both of them spend almost all day Friday preparing their bakes, and then go to bed early before a 2.30am Saturday morning wake-up call tells them it’s time to get the ovens on.
“I’m baking until about 9.30-10am,” Gus said.
“At around 8am you usually have a mad panic that you have to get it all loaded up and taken up to Hymhus.
“Usually after about two hours we have gone through most of our stuff, and then by midday me and Mat start feeling really tired.”
Asked if they are still able to enjoy it, Mat replied: “I love it.”
“There’s always those magic moments where you open up the oven and you’re like, ‘yes, it’s worked!” Gus added.
“Every week something works really well and something doesn’t work quite as well. Every week is different.”
The Bigton Bakery will expand with a weekly Wednesday night pop-up event at Mareel, which will allow people to pick up bakes on their way home from work.
Mat said they were “stealing” the idea from the San Francisco bakery Tartine, whose baker “decided he didn’t want to get up at 2.30am every morning” and started selling produce during the teatime rush instead.
The Mareel event will offer some items not usually offered at Hymhus, Mat said, including desserts and pies.
They hope to have some online pre-ordering available for the pop-up too.
However the Hymhus gathering will still be Bigton Bakery’s “anchor event”, Mat stressed.
“We have a huge emotional connection to that, and I think our customers do too,” he said.
“It’s really become a Saturday morning thing to kick the weekend off for a lot of people.”
The bakehouse will unite the pair together to bake under one roof for the first time, which Mat called “the most scary and exciting thing about it.”
“Gus has already said that if we fall out we have two containers, we can just shut the door between them,” he laughed.
“We’re going to be doing rehearsals and practising how it’s going to work, like kids practising to bake.”
The pair hope that the bakehouse – when it is opened – will allow them to ensure Bigton Bakery becomes both of their full-time jobs.
“We’re lucky that we’ve both got really supportive employers,” Mat said.
“They’re also our customers and our guinea pigs. They love being the first people to try it.”
And Mat believes that the two of them could go full-time with the bakery “by the end of the year”, with aspirations to employ more staff as well.
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