The Secret to Our Pastry: Clean Labels and Quality Ingredients

Flaky, golden, melt-in-the-mouth pastry doesn’t happen by chance. It starts with care, time, and the very best ingredients. Ours is made with all-butter pastry, giving every bite its rich flavour and signature texture – no shortcuts, no compromises.

But pastry is more than just layers of butter and flour. It’s a reflection of the values behind it: simplicity, quality, and trust. That’s why we bake with a clean label approach, use only British meat, and source our flour from a local partner with over 130 years of milling expertise.

What does “clean label” mean?

“Clean label” is a food industry term, but at heart it’s very simple. It means using ingredients you recognise – the kind you’d find in your own kitchen – rather than long lists of additives, preservatives, or artificial extras.

For us, that means:

• Made with butter instead of margarine.
• No artificial flavours or colours.
• No E-numbers or unnecessary stabilisers.

It’s about keeping things honest, straightforward, and delicious – without adding nasty E numbers.

Flour from just down the road

The secret to truly delicious savoury pastries isn’t just butter and quality ingredients – the flour matters too. That’s why we use locally-sourced flour from Bradshaw’s Flour Mill, just 15 miles from our bakery.

Bradshaw’s has been milling since 1875, combining generations of expertise with cutting-edge technology. Their state-of-the-art “C Mill”, commissioned in 2018, is one of the most advanced in Northern Europe. Designed with food safety, flour purity, and energy efficiency in mind, the mill uses:

• Careful wheat blending and cleaning processes, ensuring consistency and quality.
• A patented scouring stage to remove soil and impurities before milling.
• Omas “Leonardo” Roller Mills that regenerate energy, keeping the process cooler, quieter, and more sustainable. 

It’s this care and precision that makes Bradshaw’s flour stand out – and why we’re proud to use it in every batch of pastry we make.

The time and care behind our layers

Great pastry isn’t just about what goes in; it’s about how long you take to do it right. Our all-butter pastry undergoes over 2,000 layered folds and is left to rest for three full days before baking. This slow, careful process gives the pastry its delicate flakiness, buttery flavour, and a texture that melts in your mouth – something you simply can’t rush.

Quality meat, always

We’re proud of the fillings that go into our pastries, from slow-cooked beef to succulent pork sausage rolls. We only ever use British meat from trusted suppliers who care as much as we do about quality and provenance. It’s not just about taste – it’s about supporting British farming and ensuring every bite has the depth of flavour our customers expect.

To learn more about the meat we use in our sausage rolls, and why shoulder pork is our top choice, read more here.

Keeping it simple, keeping it British

When you bite into one of our pies or sausage rolls, you’re not just enjoying all-butter pastry and generous fillings. You’re tasting the result of our commitment to keeping things simple, sourcing locally wherever we can, and always putting quality first.

That’s what clean label means to us – and we think it makes all the difference.