London-based Comptoir Bakery has unveiled a range of bake-at-home products which are delivered to customers frozen via an online order.
Included in the range are croissants, cinnamon rolls, pain au chocolat, pain aux raisins, and chocolate chip cookies. Customers can also buy sheets of puff pastry or croissant dough to craft their own shapes or formats, as well as baking mixes for brownies, madeleines and chocolate chip cookies.
The service will initially just be available to Londoners only but is expected to roll out across the UK later in the year.
Croissants are sold in bags of six (rsp: £12), while cinnamon rolls, pain aux raisins, and pain aux chocolat come in packs of five (£12), and cookies in a four-pack (£12). A mixed bag of six pastries costs £15.
Comptoir Bakery was founded in 2010 by French master pâtissier Sebastien Wind, who trained under Gordon Ramsay and Marco Pierre White. He first set up a stall in 1999 at Borough Market, trading as Sweet, and later moved to incorporating his latest retail business.
It has since grown to operate four bakery cafés across the capital including at Borough Market and Southwark Cathedral, and on Bermondsey Street and Maltby Street. Located behind the latter outlet on Druid Street is a bakery school, where attendees can take workshops to learn about choux and puff pastry, Viennoiserie, hot cross buns, macarons, tartelettes, and brionuts – the viral brioche-doughnut hybrid which is claimed to have been invented at Comptoir.
The company has also become a family-run affair with Sebastien’s son Quentin serving as CEO, daughter Lola as event manager, and artist mother Sylvie’s artwork hanging in its venues.
“We are on a mission to bring the best of French baking to people at home, in London initially and then further afield, using only the finest, handpicked British and French ingredients, enabling people to flood their kitchens with the irresistible odours of fresh French baking,” commented Quentin Wind.
“In each case, the dough has been expertly created by artisan bakers in our own kitchens, not mass produced, and has been crafted using hand-picked, high quality ingredients. That is vitally important to us,” he added.
Awareness of bake-at-home products and trust in baking from frozen is growing among consumers, with Délifrance’s ‘Prove It: Viennoiserie’ report last year finding 28% of survey respondents were stocking their freezers with pastries.
Cambridge craft bakery business Fitzbillies launched a bake-at-home range in 2023, as did the Jason’s Sourdough brand and Scottish pie maker Bells Food Group.
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