Rebecca Bishop

The Two Magpies chain is a roaring success – an artisan bakery, with cafes, that have sprinkled a little bit of baking magic across Norfolk and Sufffolk. It was set up 10 years ago by Rebecca Bishop and her then husband, Jim, with the original branch in Southwold, right on the High Street.

Now there are branches in Aldeburgh, Darsham, Norwich, Holt, Blakeney, Woodbridge, Beccles and, soon to come, Wells, with a branch due to open on May 15. The company employs more than 100 people and has its main production site in Halesworth, with a fleet of vans delivering the tasty goodies to the various shops and cafes.

Rebecca comes from a teaching background, working in both art and textiles departments in high schools, but decided to turn her passion into her business, attending a bread-making course at the School of Artisan Food in Nottinghamshire. Her love of baking is simple, she says, describing it as ‘expression of love.’

Once the decision to open a bakery was taken, the search for a suitable destination began. ‘We wanted somewhere with a good greengrocer and butcher’s – but no bakery. And I wanted to live somewhere nice – I really liked the Isle of Skye, for example!’ she says.

They settled on Southwold and lived over the shop for some time, with Rebecca creating a small onsite bakery, too. The town centre bakery was an instant success, with customers regularly queuing down the street for the breads, cinnamon rolls, cheese straws, pastries, sausage rolls – with their all butter pastry – and decent coffee. ‘The first five years were very hard,’ she admits. ‘You bake through the night as the shops open at 8am, packed full with all your fresh bakes. It is a very tough life.’

Rewards came as she won Gold at the World Bread Awards in 2014 and 2015, and she is also a keen promoter of the Real Bread Campaign.

Now Rebecca, who is in her mid 50s with three grown up children, leaves much of the day-to-day operational side of things to others, including her second husband Steve Magnall who is the company’s joint owner with Rebecca. He comes from a retail background having previously been the CEO at St Peter’s Brewery, based in the countryside south of Bungay.

Her main interest these days, she says, is product development, and she very much enjoys teaching classes at the Cook School, at Darsham. Most classes last a day and her most popular ones are, of course, making sourdough. ‘People come with various levels of ability and experience but they all learn something new,’ she says, adding that she also enjoys offering online classes, too. ‘All the courses are really accessible and you gain confidence – you need to be precise when baking, you need to get your timings right, but it is rewarding.’

She also enjoys collaborations with local producers, saying the company uses Hills Farm oils from Halesworth, milk and butter from Fen Farm Dairy, near Bungay, and Blythburgh pork in their super popular sausage rolls. ‘And it is important that we use seasonal ingredients, too – I’m looking forward to the first asparagus arriving.’

Her latest project is her first recipe book which has just gone on sale. Simply called Two Magpies Bakery by Rebecca Bishop, it is published by Headline Home at £26. It contains more than 100 recipes, showing you how to make everything from breads to pastries and pizza, including sourdoughs, scones, croissants and cardamom buns, with her straightforward instructions accompanied by mouth-watering photography. Two particular crowd favourites include Adnams Broadside bread pudding and lemon shortbread slice and there are ambitious cake ideas too.

She admits that she had thought about writing a book for about seven years, amassing lots of bits of paper, and squirreling away recipes and stories. She explains that just as she was thinking she should really get on with it, a publisher came into the Blakeney shop and suggested it. ‘So it sort of fell into our laps. And, as I thought I just about had it ready, I was given quite a short time to produce it – then I discovered all I really had was lots of different scraps of paper!’

She is a real fan of cookbooks, reading them the way most of us would read a novel – from start to finish, with no jumping chapters! She admires the work of Diana Henry and Yotam Ottolenghi, and says she has around 300 cookbooks of her own. ‘I have a whole wall, a dividing wall between my kitchen and dining room, which is just filled with cookbooks!’

She laughs as she admits that she wasn’t known for her own culinary skills when younger but says her interest in food probably developed when she lived in Hong Kong from the age of 13 to 18. ‘Eating out is the norm there, so we ate out three or four times a week and I was exposed to lots and lots of flavours.

‘Now I like to dissect recipes, to really understand how they work, and I like to cook from scratch, too.’

She hopes to write more cookbooks and also enjoys creating material for her own website, www.thenextloaf.co.uk and her Instagram account, thenextloaf, where she shares her baking adventures.

Photos: India Hobson