Small Food Bakery

Bread fermented up to thirty hours

Everything on the bread shelf is naturally leavened and slowly fermented, up to thirty hours, then baked from scratch on the premises: sourdough, wholemeal, spelt and rye. There is no frozen dough, no par-baked shortcut and nothing added that a baker would not recognise, which is the point the bakery makes about industrial ingredients more generally.

Grain is where the thinking starts rather than where it ends. The bakery trades directly with farmers and sells directly to customers, and works with YQ, a population wheat, alongside the more familiar flours. That relationship is the reason the loaves change with the harvest rather than staying identical all year.

A bakery, a kitchen and a grocery in an old school

Small Food occupies part of Primary, a former primary school in Nottingham now given over to studios and public space, and the operation spans a sourdough bakery, a kitchen, a grocery store and a few tables for eating in. Founder Kimberley Bell, a baker and sustainable food activist who also founded the UK Grain Lab, frames the project as re-imagining the food system from the ground up, and she speaks regularly on small food and food sovereignty.

In practice that means workshops, events and teaching sit alongside the counter, with production visible rather than hidden. The Good Food Guide named it among Britain's Best Bakeries for 2026 and calls it a genuine community hub, which fits a place where people come to browse groceries or take a class as much as to buy a loaf. Primary also houses a bookshop and gallery with its own barista-led coffee counter, so the bakery sits inside a wider cluster of food, books and art.

Start with the potato and leek scone

The potato and leek scone has the loudest reputation on the counter and is the thing to ask for first. Savouries carry more weight here than at most bakeries: sausage rolls, pies and pizza slices make the place useful well beyond a quick sweet pastry.

For sweet baking, look for croissants, pain au chocolat, fruity Danish pastries and the cheesecake with blackberry jam. What is out changes with the day, so the reliable approach is a naturally leavened loaf, one savoury bake, then whichever laminated or fruit-led piece came out of the oven best that morning.