Welbourne’s Bakery, the home of Plum Bread

Welbourne’s Bakery was established in 1896 in the village of Navenby.  The family-run business sells plenty of local produce including sausages, cakes, wines, juice drinks and pies.

Welbourne’s use local produce where they can and the meat in their homemade pies is caught locally.  

Ashley, a shop assistant at the bakery, wrongly believes that the wheat from the UK is not good enough for baking. He said: “The wheat we use for the flour comes from Russia and or Canada.  The wheat produced in England is not suitable for comsumption as it is predominatly grown for animal food.”  

The bakery is famous for it’s plum bread- made from the traditional recipe that dates back to the 1890s.  There has only been one adjustment to the recipe, which was the change from lard to vegetable fat, which made the bread suitable for vegetarians.  According to Ashley, 60,000 loaves of plum bread are made every year, averaging 1,500 loaves a week.

So, where did the name ‘plum bread’ come from when the recipe contains no plums? Ashley explained: “Plum is an old term for dried fruit.”  Hence the handfuls of dried fruit found in each slice.

Plum bread has recently been submitted to gain PGI status. PGI stands for ‘Products of Geographical Indication’ and is a part of  European Legislation concerning regional speciality foods. 

This means a foodstuff has to be either produced, processed or prepared in a certain geographical area and have the reputation, features or certain qualities attributable to that area.  Ashley said: “we were going to try for it, but it’s a lot of work and would need all the producers of plum bread to get together and standardise their bread.”