Britain’s kings of sourdough

In an industrial estate near Leicester, Geary’s Bakeries turns water, salt and Canadian flour into sourdough bread. The dough ferments slowly in a special room, which, for those familiar with the end product, smells like a thousand breakfasts. Baked loaves of various kinds zip along a conveyor belt, where they are classified by automatic cameras and sent one way or another. The bags into which the sliced bread will be packed are opened with little puffs of air. A food associated with finicky artisans has been industrialised.For most of its existence Geary’s Bakeries, a family firm founded in 1906, was a small outfit that supplied shops in the East Midlands. By 2013 it was making loaves for Aldi, a discounter, and employing 83 people. Today most supermarket chains sell the firm’s “Jason’s Sourdough” bread. The company has expanded quickly to 440 workers, a number that will rise to 500 when a new building is completed. Though small compared with conventional sliced-bread behemoths like Hovis and Warburtons, it is a leader in the bubbly business of making sourdough.