Justin Gellatly: I want to know that every loaf is perfect

Bread Ahead, in Borough Market, is not yet a year old. But already business has exceeded even the wildest expectations of its owners. "I didn't think we'd be half this busy," says its star baker, Justin Gellatly. "It turns out that we already need a bigger oven." At Bread Ahead's stall nearby we're in the kitchen just across the way shoppers can't get enough of its sourdough, its 7kg Cathedral Loaves (named for Southwark Cathedral, where the company's sourdough starter was blessed) or of Gellatly's famous doughnuts, which are filled with a combination of crème patisserie and chantilly cream the better to make them just a little lighter. Even so, ask Gellatly if he'd like to "roll out" Bread Ahead across the capital and beyond, and his face moves from pleasure to mild pain. "No. You can't control the quality if you do that. I want to know that every loaf is absolutely perfect."

Gellatly made his name as a baker at St John in Clerkenwell, where he worked for 13 years. "I was a chef at the Greenhouse [in Mayfair], a fairly heavy traditional kitchen with lots of shouting and screaming. I came to St John to learn about offal for some specials I wanted to do, and by the end of the day Fergus [Henderson, St John's founding chef] had offered me a job. I didn't have a plan. I fell into baking. The first time I baked at St John, I was unloading the oven, and the bread was crackling away it was really singing to me and I thought: I could do this for the rest of my life." He tells me that there are "no words" to describe how supportive Henderson was. But the love is obviously mutual. "With Justin the force is strong and the crumb is good," says Henderson, plugging Gellatly's brilliant new book Bread, Cake, Doughnut, Pudding.