A short history of baking at Brookes

As Bake Off fever grips the nation once again, we take a look back at the history of baking at Brookes.

We have offered training in baking and cooking for over a century, since the days of the Oxford City Technical School. The 1911 prospectus gives the syllabus for day and evening cookery classes, detailing the dishes students were taught to master. They include a number of savoury bakes – bread rolls, cheese straws, sausage rolls, veal and ham pie – and a huge variety of sweet treats: iced coffee cake, shortbread, Yorkshire tea-cakes, orange sponge, chocolate biscuits, girdle scones, Madeira cake, cream buns, chocolate éclairs, Swiss roll, railway pudding, Christmas cake… and the list goes on. 

For decades, despite success in recruiting and training increasing numbers of students, the school struggled to secure appropriate premises. An inspector’s report of 1947 detailed the locations of classes at what was by then the Oxford Schools of Technology, Art and Commerce. At that point bakery classes were held at the Cadena café in Cornmarket. A restaurant and shop with on-site bakery, the Cadena was a much-loved Oxford venue until its closure in 1970. The Oxford Mail looked back at its heyday and the sadness at its eventual closure in this Memory Lane feature. 

Bakery and confectionery students held an annual exhibition showcasing their skills. In 1953, the year of the Coronation, they produced their own ‘showstoppers’ on a royal theme with a display of loaves in the shape of the coronation coach and fancy crowned cakes. 

A baking competition marking the opening of Singletree in 1954

The department had by then been relocated to Cowley Road, but in 1954 it moved again to new premises at Singletree in Rose Hill. Singletree had been the home of Lord and Lady Pakenham and had later been used as an infants’ school, a youth club and an old people’s home. Its official opening coincided with the department’s annual course assessments and a baking competition among the 15 part-time students. The Paul Hollywood of those days was England’s champion baker, a Mr W Newman who lived in nearby Brill. He is shown above discussing the competition entries with Mr R M Brierley, a representative of the Bakers’ Union. 

The new premises introduced the concept of a catering school run ‘like a hotel’, enabling students to practise their skills in a real life setting. In 1965 catering students were tested even further, with the preparation of a seven-course banquet to celebrate 100 years since the establishment of the Oxford School of Art. The event also marked the opening of the new catering block on the Headington campus.

In the last 50 years facilities have improved further, and since 1999 students have been able to train within the professional setting of Brookes Restaurant, which also has its own in-house cookery and wine school, including short courses in bread making. 

This historical round-up would not be quite complete without a baking inspired innuendo – this one from 1897. A piece of pudding, or ‘dick’ (as in ‘spotted dick’), was preserved by a Westminster College student who noticed it turned solid if left for a couple days. Can you guess the name he gave it? The answer is on our timeline.