‘Flour everywhere’ and a ‘life-changing’ écliar? We spoke to the founders of Mapperley's Coosh Bakery, Rachel and Tom Egan.

Let’s start at the beginning – what’s the story behind Coosh? What made you decide to enter into the world of baking?

Rachel: In 2019, I decided to leave my corporate job. I’d known from a young age that I wanted to get into food, but I wasn’t sure what that would look like or which avenue to take. I think chefs on TV scared me, as did the idea of working in service, and I knew that wasn’t for me, I’m too much of a softie. Then we discovered the School of Artisan Food.

By the end of the first year of the two-year course, we had already decided we were going to open a bakery, and started working out the logistics so we could launch Coosh as soon as the course was done. We first started trading from home in our kitchen, just the two of us, baking bread and selling it. We would bake all night, so we could open our door to customers at eight in the morning. It was chaos, we had flour everywhere! We dedicated our whole selves to it, including our personal space and life.

Loads of people dream about running a bakery, but what was the moment where you went, ‘Right, we’re doing this’? Did it feel like a leap of faith or was it more of a natural step?

Tom: There was one leap-of-faith moment, and then the rest of it snowballed from there. After the open day at the School of Artisan Food, I could see in Rachel’s eyes that this was it - this was what she was meant to do. We went to Welbeck Farm Shop, got a coffee and a sausage roll, and basically said, “Okay, you’ll leave your job, and I’ll support us while you train for two years.”

Rachel: After that, it sort of spiralled. All these ideas came about, and it became a natural progression to do something in food. Tom has this ‘anything is possible’ mantra and a deep faith in me that I can achieve more. That was partly the moment that felt like a revolution - an ‘anything is possible, go and do it’ kind of thing.

What’s a typical day at Coosh like? Paint us a picture: are we talking pre-dawn starts, a million croissants in the oven and coffee on tap? And out of curiosity, what’s the most bakes you’ve ever smashed out in a single day?

Rachel: It’s standard for us to smash out around 500 bakes on a Saturday, and we serve nearly 1,000 customers a week now. I feel like we’re always running hot, especially as demand keeps growing. We actually start prep the night before at around midnight because we cold prove everything we do for control purposes and to get a more consistent product. We can start baking as early as 2am, and the other bakers will start coming in around 4am. We’ll be perfecting the display and getting everything ready for our 8am opening.

That’s a really early start. How do you survive and what keeps motivating you to do it?
Rachel: I’d say to anyone thinking about starting a bakery: be warned, it’s definitely hard work. But it’s also incredibly rewarding. Motivation-wise, and this may sound cheesy, I genuinely don’t think I need any. I just love doing it. I also love the people we work with. We’ve chosen a great team, and they’re so dedicated and so much fun. I look forward to it every day and can’t wait to get into the bakery. I’ve never felt like that about a job before.

Nottingham’s food scene is buzzing right now – how does it feel to be part of it? Have the locals embraced Coosh in the way you hoped?
Rachel: It feels surreal because I’ve never thought of myself as a particularly cool person. Bakeries are often run by super trendy people, so I always imagine customers coming in expecting that and then it’s just me and Tom! I find it really funny.

Tom: Since day one, we’ve had so much support. People were willing to come into our house to get our products. When we first started, we had 181 messages on Facebook from people asking for loaves of bread. That kind of response makes it all worthwhile. It’s an amazing feeling when your neighbours say, “Thank you so much for choosing Mapperley.”

What’s been the biggest surprise or challenge about running a bakery? Any unexpected moments that you’ll never forget?
Tom: It’s been a real surprise how many people it takes to do this. It takes a small village to produce the food we do now and at the scale we’re working at, because everything is so hands-on and labour-intensive. In a way, that’s a really good thing because when you buy our product, the money is going back to the people who made it, which is absolutely fantastic. But on the flip side, it means it takes a lot of people to do what we do, because everything is so carefully crafted.

By the way, the name Coosh – it’s catchy, but what’s the story? Is there a secret meaning, or was it one of those ideas that just clicked?
Rachel: A couche (pronounced “coosh”) is a French word and it’s a baker’s cloth or linen, used to prove your bread and hold its shape. I remember when I heard the word, I thought it sounded funny, so we changed the spelling to make it more friendly and approachable. It’s a soft and squidgy word and we feel like we are soft and squidgy too, so it fits. It also sounds a bit like an innuendo and that makes people curious about it.

Finally, and perhaps the most important question of all: You can only eat one pastry for the rest of your life - what is it?
Both: We think that’s an unreasonable question. We’d have to say our eclairs - you think you’ve had an éclair and then you eat one of ours and there’s your life before this éclair and then your life after this éclair. Our most sold product would be the cinnamon buns and we’re strangely known for those - we’ve had an actual Canadian who said they taste like Canadian cinnamon buns, which is very high praise to be honest.

Visit Coosh Bakery at 153a, Breck Hill Road, Mapperley, NG3 5JP.

@cooshbakery