Peters Yard Bakery, Quartermile, Edinburgh, Scotland, United Kingdom

With the Scottish city of Edinburgh becoming one of the most trendy cities in Europe for food it is no wonder that Jan Hedh, a Swedish master baker of some repute and 35 years' experience, decided to launch his latest venture in the city.

The new retail bakery, which will produce all of its products fresh on the premises, is the second bakery venture for Hedh in conjunction with his Swedish partners Peter Ljungquist and Christer Alfredsson. Their first was in Ystad in southern Sweden, set up six years ago.

The Scottish venture also takes in two partners based in Edinburgh, including Sophie Dow, a Swede who confesses she "has often found it difficult to obtain a good choice of bread in the city".

Hedh chose Edinburgh because of the proximity of excellent-quality fresh ingredients and also because the city has an interesting mix of people and high proportion of students and demanding consumers. According to Hedh the city has excellent demographics and is also a good size and very civilised.

BAKERY

The bakery, which opened just one week before Christmas 2007, is situated in the new and prestigious Quartermile development being built on the 19-acre former site of the Edinburgh Royal Infirmary. The Quartermile development is being developed by Gladedale Capital and was designed by the architects Foster and Partners. Development is expected to be completed in five years.

The first tenants of the £450m development, which will eventually see 900 apartments and 350,000ft² of space for office, shops, cafes, bars and restaurants, were Peters Yard Bakery (one of the best positions, just off Middle Meadow Walk). The bakery will produce a range of Swedish breads (artisan bread), pastries, open sandwiches and cakes along with ice-cream, chocolate, jam and marmalade.

The bakery will have a retail shop attached and also a licensed cafe and bar. The bakery will be staffed by four master bakers brought over from Sweden (local staff will be trained as well) and will open from 7am to 7pm every day. There will also be the possibility of ordering lunch from the bakery online for delivery and possibly a mail order service as well.

PROJECT AND SETUP

The bakery occupies a 1,800ft² prime site in the Quartermile development and is equipped with state-of-the-art bakery equipment. The Quartermile buildings were designed with façades of steel and glass which means that the bakery is visible to the customers from the outside.

The bakery will turn out 400 loaves of bread per day using its five-deck Bongard oven. Everything is baked and produced on the premises except cookies, biscotti and crispbread.

The architects for the project were JM Architects of Glasgow. The Bongard oven and prover were supplied by AGA Bakery, the fridge, freezers and counters were supplied by Williams and the pastry counter was from Porkka. The cafe was designed by the Swedish designer Nirvan Richter and was outfitted by Dunglass.

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