About Us

Hempnall Village bakery is a home-based microbakery business located in the lovely village of Hempnall in South Norfolk. 

We launched in January 2017, and we offer sourdough & artisan breads for delivery to the local area, or collection if you live further afield. Currently we have one baking day a week, with loaves coming out of the oven late Friday nights & delivery / collection taking place on Saturday mornings.  The order deadline for each week is midnight on Wednesday.

We are committed to providing real bread, made slowly according to traditional techniques & simple, age-old recipes. We do not add any additives or unnecessary extra ingredients to our bread. We make sourdough breads, which contain no added yeast but are leavened by the addition of a 'starter' - a mixture of bread flour & water which attracts natural yeasts from the environment & creates a gentle fermentation culture. Sourdough breadmaking is an ancient practice which produces delicious bread with a distinctive depth of taste, open irregular crumb & a properly 'crusty' crust.

We produce more conventional, yeast-leavened breads, made slowly with small quantities of yeast, in white, wholemeal & granary varieties, and with the option of tinned loaves to fit in toasters or sandwich boxes or more natural 'freestanding' loaves. Further variety is provided by the inclusion of Italian style olive oil breads & a traditional English milk loaf. We also offer a selection of wheat free breads, a "black" 100% rye loaf similar to traditional Russian & Scandinavian breads, and both white & wholemeal varieties of spelt bread. Spelt flour is made from an ancient grain which is an ancestor of the modern wheat that is widely used today.

For more details on each of the breads we produce please see the individual product pages.

We do not offer any gluten free products as our working space is too small to guarantee no cross contamination with gluten containing ingredients, so we are unable to offer any products suitable for those with coeliac disease. It is worth noting, however, that many people who find that conventional, supermarket bread disagrees with them or believe they may have an 'intolerance' to gluten find that sourdough wheat breads or spelt/rye varieties do not have the same effect. Spelt & rye flour do both contain gluten but in smaller quantities than conventional wheat, and it is thought that perhaps the fermentation process involved in making sourdough bread may somehow mitigate these issues.

We are a family run enterprise. My name is Hannah Riviere Scott, and I work with a small team of artisans, making the loaves entirely by hand & baking in a stone-decked bread oven in our micro-bakery. Vital support with the business is provided by my husband Daniel.

Through this website you can also order products from our 'sister' companies. Daniel is a beekeeper & produces fantastic 'raw' honey from hives sited in the village, sold as Hempnall Honey Co.

If you have any questions about Hempnall Village Bakery do please get in touch by phone or email using the details on the contact us page.

Hannah & Daniel