BELFAST BRIEFING:An artisan bakery in Co Derry is now officially home to the UK Baker of the Year

THE SWEET smell of success lingers in the air today in the village of Castledawson and that is even before you step foot into one of its best known family businesses – Ditty’s Home Bakery.

The award-winning artisan bakery, which will shortly celebrate its 50th year in business, is famous for its trays of “wee buns”; now it is officially home to the UK Baker of the Year.

Robert Ditty beat bakers from across the UK to bring the title back to Co Derry.

His father, a master baker, first started the business in 1963, but it has been Ditty who has grown it from one small shop to the thriving retail and wholesale operation that it has become. In the late 1970s Ditty’s Home Bakery, which has turnover of approximately £2.64 million (€3 million per year) employed about 45 people.

Today, in an area of high unemployment, it has grown its workforce to 70 local people.

Robert Ditty prides himself on the fact that the business remains very much a “home bakery”, true to the ethos on which his father founded it.

He had not always planned to be a second generation artisan baker. A fine art graduate, he originally had ambitions to be an artist. But a bomb attack in Castledawson in 1976 which destroyed the original family bakery and his studio, which had been above the premises, set Robert Ditty on a very different path than he had planned.

He had always spent his summers working in the bakery and had spent some time in small family bakeries in Brittany in France. Following the bomb, he decided to concentrate all his creative energies on the family business.

Ditty, who the judges of the baking industry awards described as a “beacon” in his chosen field, is passionate about the skills involved in creating his products. He uses local ingredients where possible and makes sure “people use their hands” to craft his bakery products rather than relying on “the machinery” that some of his competitors employ.

It is one of the reasons why he set up the Artisan Bakers of Northern Ireland group to promote the range of knowledge and skills inherent in the traditional industry. Ditty worries that some of these traditional skills are under threat because of the way “food has gone”.

“I don’t run a factory but I do train people to use their hands, to develop skills and that is what makes the difference when it comes to taste. Our bakers start work at 3 o’clock in the morning to produce our breads, from soda farls to wheaten, and also our 40-plus range of buns.”

Ditty’s Home Bakery is a supplier to retailers at home and further afield but it chooses who it supplies and it likes to develop relationships with them.

“It is a very, very competitive environment. If you go into any supermarket and walk up the biscuit aisle, you could eat a different biscuit every day of the year and never repeat yourself.

“If you get involved in supplying certain outlets it can become an unstoppable machine – where it is hard to make money and also one that you may not always be able to depend on.

“What we have developed is a loyal customer base which wants our product. We don’t tend to go out and sell it as such – people come to us,” Robert says.

Ditty’s approach balances his retail business with his wholesale trade while never moving away from his role as a “community” baker. “I play a very active role in my community. It is very important to me and I like to give something back,” he says.

He operates two shops: one in Castledawson and another just down the road in the market town of Magherafelt. Between them, they sell roughly 7,000 wee buns every week.

High-end retailers from Waitrose to Fortum Mason and passengers on Cathay Pacific passengers are customers for his oatcake range, which have also graced the tables of many high-profile events, not least the recent state banquet in Dublin Castle during Queen Elizabeth’s visit.

He is now hoping to take a big bite of business opportunities that the London Olympics might create having just been nominated as an official supplier.

Ditty may be the UK baker of the year but he has no plans to hang up his apron anytime soon. If anything, he believes he has the ingredients at hand to make Ditty’s success even sweeter in the future.