Now spearheaded by Helen Evans and Florin Grama in partnership with James Lowe, Flor’s baking still speaks in the vernacular of flour, butter, fermentation, and heat developed by Anna Higham in its early days in Borough Market. Flor puts a London accent on the exacting tradition and relentless experimentalism that make Paris and Copenhagen two of Europe’s most formidable cities for pastry.
Having moved from London’s oldest food market to London’s nerdiest food market at Spa Terminus, some things have changed. There’s more space and more scale; home deliveries and nationwide kits; and it’s only open to the public on Fridays and Saturdays. But croissants and pains aux chocolats still shatter into perfect layers, but carry the austere depth of fresh wheat and a deeply caramelised, almost savoury sheen; seasonal fruit danishes — often with custards flavoured with their leaves or flowers — still possess seriousness of flavour and imagination to match their beauty.
Take a look around the first morning rush, on a cold day in Bermondsey in December.
The day starts early, under the arches at Spa Terminus.
So it’s time to get the coffee on. The Lyle’s/Flor coffee programme is renowned.
Where there’s baking, there’s flour. Flor’s head baker Helen Evans uses heritage wheats, some of which date back to 1660, both for flavour and for their genetic characteristics which can negate the need for fertilisers and pesticides.
They — currently Hen Gymro, a Welsh landrace variety — are combined with stoneground white flour and a touch of heritage rye in Flor’s main sourdough loaf.
Back to bread shortly. Where there’s flour, there’s butter.
The two combine most happily in Flor’s laminated doughs, for croissants, pains aux chocolats, and fruit Danishes. This, too, uses proportions of whole grains alongside white flour, often emmer or or einkorn. Here’s the butter block: essential for lamination.
The wheat varieties and introduction of wholegrain gives Flor’s bakes a complex character, but also makes them less predictable, and so harder to work with, keeping the bakers on their toes. As for the butter, it adds fat and cooling richness to the final bake...
But also adds the water content necessary to create steam upon baking and puff up those gossamer layers.
Alexa, add heat.
In they go...... And out they c— wait, what, the croissants turned into pains aux chocolats?
When these swirls of flaky, light pastry filled with raisins and a sweet vanilla cream come out the oven, it’s...
Pain au raisin o’clock.
Perhaps Flor’s signature dish is a lardy bun, with enriched dough rolled around a filling of tea-soaked currants and brown sugar. They go in ready to puff up in the oven, before being brushed with a sticky caramel with a hint of mace.
Mixing the filling for the lardy buns, dense with brown sugar and soon, the currants.
Baked, but not yet finished.
Wow, nice burnished caramelised base, would be a shame if someone made it even stickier by dunking it in a pan of spiced caramel.
Michaël Protin
Goddamn it.
Meanwhile: brown! butter! cakes!
A hit from the Lyle’s pastry section under Anna Higham that Evans has carried on: brown butter, panela, ground almonds, buckwheat flour, and egg combine to make a fudgy, indecently rich nugget.
Back to bread, with the bakers transferring loaves for shaping after their fermentation.
The dough is initially slack after its bench rest, but the scraper and handling will shape it into a tense, plump loaf.
The dough scraper helps with creating the necessary tension between dough and board to shape the loaf.
Loaves, here porridge, are turned out of the bannetons in which they take their final rest to develop structure and shape before being baked.
Finished loaves — these porridge, flecked with oats — will either go out for delivery, or be racked up for sale.
Michaël Protin
Packing the brown butter cake goods.
Breads, pastries, and croissants, together at last.