Baked And Uncensored with Tom Oxford

What are your earliest memories of food growing up? Was baking a part of your childhood homes? 

Probably playing hide & seek with my sister in our family's vegetarian restaurant in Brixton, weaving between giant sacks of brown rice and towering stacks of soya milk. We'd sneak peeks into the kitchen to watch the massive pans of soup bubbling away and industrial levels of tofu getting butchered on the chopping block. Treats consisted mainly of carob coated nuts, stem ginger and halva. I doubt I had a real hit of sugar until I got hold of some chocolate bars from the corner shop with my pocket money, devouring them like forbidden treasure in a house where candy was pretty much contraband.

Where did you grow up and how did your surroundings shape you?

My childhood spanned a few different places and had the feel of a health food migration pattern. We started in London, then Hereford, before finally settling in Devon. In London, we spent a lot of time at Neal's Yard, demolishing frozen yogurt with the ever present smell of Monmouth Coffee being roasted. We'd also take regular visits to Food for Thought in Soho to scoff from wooden bowls filled with aggressively healthy salad. We even lived above our own health food shop and ate almost exclusively from it. 

Devon added verdant scenery to the natural fibre upbringing and something even more special, understanding where food actually comes from, and why it's important for us as manufacturers to be part of a food chain with integrity. All of this has shaped many of our recipes and me as a person. A bit of city life still clings to my muddy boots, hopefully keeping me in touch with the masses and making sure our recipes don't turn too virtuous.  

What was your first ever job that earned you some money?

Pot washing and veg prepping at the local pub. I think I was 14. I took it pretty seriously, earning some rave reviews for my advanced potato peeling technique. I eventually graduated to front of house, learning how to make an Irish Coffee, honing my customer service patter and finally reaching my true potential when I managed to drop a whole Rainbow Trout down a diners back. 

Is there anything that people would never guess about you?

I feel like I'm incredibly predictable and completely unmysterious, what you see is what you get. But if I had to say, most people might assume I have the basic qualifications to make a CV look presentable, but they'd be wrong. My most impressive qualification remains an expired First Aid certificate, though my forklift license runs a close second. 

Are you more of a perfectionist or are you into happy accidents in the kitchen?

A mixture of both, really. I like to experiment, but only after extensive negotiations with my ingredients. I would never just chuck some spice into a recipe and hope for the best, the spice isn't even allowed in the room before we've had a serious chat about why it deserves to be there. I need to know what I'm aiming for, then plan accordingly. So now that you've asked, maybe I'm less of an experimenter than a control freak who's convinced himself he's being creative.

What part of the business are you most proud of right now?

I'd say longevity and sticking to our values, a concept that sounds quaint until you dig into what that means. The easiest thing in business is to quietly downgrade what you're selling while pretending nothing's changed. You can swap out real vanilla for artificial, hire fewer staff, use cheaper flour. There's an entire playbook for extracting maximum profit from minimum effort. If money becomes your north star, you inevitably find yourself in the great race to the bottom, which is a competition nobody should want to enter.

As food producers, we should all be conspiring to make things that are actually good. Suppliers, staff, ingredients, service, the whole chain. When I think about our bakery, I think about what a slice of our cake represents in someone's day, and I'd rather that be something worth the calories, with real people and a good story behind it. 

What kind of legacy do you hope to leave with Exploding Bakery, beyond the cakes? 

I feel like that is a little too close to the modern preoccupation with self importance, like having a Personal Brand, knowing your Personality Type or being a Super Productive Person. I guess the question is, do I think the Exploding Bakery matters beyond my involvement, or the instant pleasure hit of a good slice of cake. The answer is no, and I like that. We make great cake, we pay fair wages, we try not to be terrible human beings in the process. In a world that seems increasingly complicated, there's something to be said for keeping things simple. If that's not enough of a legacy, I'm not sure what is.