e5 Bakehouse began in the spring of 2010, after Ben took a short course in sourdough baking at the School of Artisan Food. Back home in Hackney, he built a clay oven in the corner of a railway arch, fuelled with off-cuts from local carpenters. Bread came first, then lunches, then coffee and cakes. In the summer of 2011 the bakery moved into its own arch by London Fields and has since tunnelled into the arches on either side, adding a pastry department, a flour mill, a chocolate facility and a deli shop. The name is a nod to its former postcode.
The business is certified organic by the Soil Association and runs on renewable power. Heritage wheats grown at Fellows Farm, its farm in Suffolk, are stone-milled on a French mill at the Bakehouse, the farm sends cereals, vegetables and fruit every week, and bread goes to local customers by bicycle only. The sourdough classes have taught thousands of home bakers.
e5 began roasting coffee in 2017 at e5 Roasthouse in Poplar, now Poplar Bakehouse, a café, bakery, shop and roastery that employs and trains people from refugee communities. The beans come from community-owned exporters at origin, half of them certified organic, and are roasted in small batches on a 6kg Giesen. One Colombian coffee, Las Brisas from Tolima, crossed to the UK by sailing boat with Raybel Charters, came up the Thames on a sailing barge and was lifted off a narrow boat on the Limehouse Cut straight into the roastery. The espresso and filter beans of the moment are sold online, and a third café, e5 Storehouse, is at V&A East.
Coffee on the shelf
Photograph: e5 Bakehouse