The DoughMother: Community Rallies Around Burgled Bakery

‘I’m gonna make him a cheesecake he can’t refuse’ - this, or something like it, has been the The DoughMother bakery’s credo since it first flung open its doors nearly six years ago. Lodged unsuspectingly in the middle of a housing estate in Beeston, this à la mode cafe looks like it’s been transplanted from a continental strada; lovingly filled with voluminous glassware, bright Belle Epoch posters and a well-loved upright piano, The DoughMother quickly became a word-of-mouth phenomenon in Beeston and further afield, not least on the basis of its unmissable fruit-syrup-glazed koulouri.

A triumph in their first location, the team - led by Houlia Mola, an expat from Greece with a PhD in biochemistry and molecular biology - has recently been decorating a new unit in Beeston town centre. But this week, bad news arrived on that front. The new shop, intended to redouble the success of the bakery, had been broken into - with expensive tools stolen and lots of hard-to-replace vintage decor smashed. ‘Things are difficult as they are, so this nasty cherry was definitely not needed on our cake,’ said Houlia as she announced the burglary online; The Godfather films which inspired the bakery’s name did their best to put us off a life of crime, but clearly not everybody got the message.

Still, all is not lost, as Beestonites have quickly rallied to start helping to raise funds to get the business back on track, and friends of the bakery Hilary Cook and Debra Urbacz have launched a GoFundMe which you can find here. Independent businesses, especially those as beloved as The DoughMother, are the jewels in the crown of any local economy - and we at LeftLion think we should have their back. They've given us plenty of dough over the years, and it seems fitting that we in Notts, and in fact bread-lovers the world over, can find a bit to give back.