Rise bakery in Bridport named among the best in the UK

Rise bakery on East Road, just off the A35 on the edge of Bridport, has ranked on The Times' list of the top 49 bakeries to visit in the UK.

The list was compiled by chefs and bakers local to a region.

Nick Benwell, Operations Manager at Rise said: “In our first restaurant, we didn’t like the bread that we could source so we made our own in the back room of our restaurant and it evolved from there and then the restaurant couldn’t catch up with the demand.”

Some of their bestsellers include the sourdough bread and croissants.

Bread baked at Rise bakery (Image: Rise)

Nick said: “Our bread is one of our best sellers and everything is derived from our sourdough including our focaccia and ciabatta.

“On the other side, we sell thousands of croissants a month. We also have almond croissants, pain au chocolate and pain au raisin.

Rise's pain au chocolate (Image: Rise)

“We are constantly evolving and pushing and developing to improve the quality and range of what we can do with a focus on our sour dough which takes days to make.

“Customers order two days in advance as we spend days to make sure that our sour dough is the best - We also use a special butter for our croissants.

“Our head baker has been baking for more than 40 years so he knows what he’s doing, and we are baking 24 hours a day.”

When asked why he thinks the bakery received a place on the list, Nick said: “I think it’s what we do – the care and the love.

“We pride ourselves in is quality and to be recognised for that is really good. We always try to do our best.”

His personal favourites include the focaccia.

He said: “I was blown away with the flavour of the focaccia – it’s amazing and my girls absolutely adore the croissants.

“I’m very lucky as I get to try everything.”

The bakery recently had a very successful stall at the Melplash Show.

“The first show was just to find our feet – we had an idea of what we wanted to showcase.

“We brought in our coffee supplier to prepare barista coffee and set up all our pastries.

“We already had a queue from 7.30pm from just the exhibitors and the queue didn’t run out all day until we ran out.”

Richard Cooper, one of the founders and directors of Risem said: “We’re amazed that what started out as a bakery to supply our restaurants has turned into such a local institution and then going on to getting national recognition is quite unbelievable.”