OUR HISTORY

My name is Stuart Oetzmann and this website is about my business. The Metfield Bakery was founded in 1980 by Peter Hibberd in Metfield near Harleston in Norfolk. In 2004 I bought the Metfield Bakery from Peter's successor Philip Smith and amalgamated it with my own business 'the Handmade Food Company'. The two businesses were moved to one site and continued to trade as 'The Metfield Bakery'

I trained as a pastry chef in London working for various people including the Roux brothers, Sally Clarke and Anthony Worrall Thompson. Being a Norfolk boy at heart I returned to Norfolk to set up my business in late 1999. It developed from a request from a butcher (Roger Human of Tavern Tasty - see Our Friends page) who dealt solely in traditional breed pigs-namely Gloucestershire Old Spots. The man who made his pies was retiring and he wanted someone to carry on making them.

He therefore asked me to develop a pie which having been done, proved so popular that demand quickly outstripped supply. The first batch was around 30 pies, which sold extremely fast. We had absolutely no idea how to make a pork pie then and so had to improvise. Realising we needed some kind of mould we used small baked bean cans with the ends cut off to act as forms; it took about 5 hours to make 30 small pies and we thought 'there can't be a future in this…' (see the video (coming soon) on how to make the perfect pork pie using a pork pie dolly, and check the recipes for the perfect pork pie recipe)

Spurred on by the success of the basic pork pie, I started to sell them to other outlets on the north Norfolk coast. Very soon the embryonic business was selling 2-300 pies a week from a poky little restaurant kitchen.

Other products were added; I quickly developed my passion for artisan breads by producing sourdoughs and other long fermented breads as well as desserts picked up from an 8-year career as a pastry chef. The business soon grew too large for the restaurant kitchen and moved to the local bakery. We moved again twice and the business is now in an industrial unit equipped with brand new equipment. The Metfield Bakery now produces 2500 individual pies a week to some of the country's finest food stores. (See our list of stockists)

In 2001 we were nominated for Radio 4's Food Producer of the Year - the company made it to the last five and were asked to cook for the awards ceremony in London.

In 2004 The Handmade Food Company bought the Metfield Bakery outright as it seemed the perfect vehicle to expand and develop our business. The Metfield Bakery now produces organic bread, hand made traditional pies, cakes and savoury tarts. We have a passion for local foods, and our bakery is very much a British bakery. We make Lardy cake, Eccles cakes, and sourdoughs based on 18th century British recipes by people such as Eliza Acton, and Hannah Glasse. We hand raise pork pies using traditional equipment, and we try and use local cheeses where we can in our savoury tarts. We make absolutely everything down to the jam that we use in our frangipane tarts. We are very proud of our produce and believe we have a product range that is difficult to match.

We use local suppliers where we can and small producers. Most of our cheeses are made in Norfolk and we are trying to use more and more local flours. I was brought up on a smallholding where my mother believed in not using pesticides and rearing and growing all of her own food herself at a time (in the 70's) when this was considered cranky. We have been trying for some time to integrate this farm into the business and believe we have now succeeded by rearing our own pork (of which more later). This has enabled us to create a circle where we waste less and less and try to reduce our footprint on the environment. It's not perfect yet, but we're working on it.