One of the best bakeries in London says goodbye to the city on Saturday the 26th, when Flor closes its commercial and production arch at Spa Terminus.
Announcing the closure on Instagram, and as reported by Code, the bakery, run by Helen Evans, said:
We are very proud of the quality of the bread and pastries that @helenefleur26 and our bakers have produced in the last 12 months. The decision to source all our organic wheats and long straw grains from small British farms has been a wonderfully challenging and hugely rewarding experience. Working with these incredible farmers and millers has helped us create flavors that have consistently exceeded our expectations and we look forward to finding new ways to work with them in the future.
We want to say a huge thank you to all the talented bakers, chefs, and baristas who put so much into the bakery. It has been a time of constant change and learning and we are very grateful for your efforts.
Evans is going ahead with a new bakery project in Dulwich in the spring. As part of the transition, Andrew Lowkes of Bath’s lauded Landrace bakery will act as baker for Lyle’s, Flor’s Michelin-starred brother, long known for his excellent bread.
Flor arrived at Spa Terminus in December 2021, having run out of a much smaller space in the basement of his namesake restaurant, in Borough Market. Between Evans and founding head baker Anna Higham, whom Evans took over when he moved into the River Cafe, they produced some of the most fascinating breads, pastries and other pastries in the city. Evans continued and perfected Flor’s unique baking style, in which the French tradition was given an English accent, with aggressive caramelization, heirloom wheats and a rotating cast of seasonal fruitcakes. The use of heirloom wheats and grain varieties like emmer, spelt, and einkorn made their baking, already a complex balancing act of meticulous precision in measurement and more experiential knowledge that comes with time, less predictable, but more exciting.
It also provided a showcase for two standout pies previously limited to Lyle’s: Higham’s Brown Butter pies and Mince pies.
The closure of this latest item marks the end of one of the most exciting looks at what a restaurant and bakery can do together that London has seen in a long time. If speaking of culinary genres, nothing Flor did was particularly noteworthy: sharing dishes, natural wine, pastries, pizza. But hidden in the bakery, and the resounding success of Pam Yung and ASAP Pizza, was something more complex: the ferocity of devotion was not populist, but an obsession—with quality, interesting food, constant evolution—that defined his work. and, in turn, inspired his fans.