20th May 2009
Cornish bakery demonstrates the art of pasty crimping to the nation.
Teaching Prince Charles’s stepson how to make a pasty on prime time TV isn’t an everyday experience, but that’s exactly what happened to Crantock Bakery’s Helen Hambly.
Helen travelled to London last month to appear on the UKTV Food show ‘Market Kitchen’, where she demonstrated the art of pasty crimping to presenters Tom Parker Bowles and Matt Tebbut.
For Helen, from Nanpean near St Austell, being centre stage on a television studio set was far removed from her day job supervising the pasty crimping line at Crantock Bakery.
“It was really good, I’ve never been to London so I was excited to go up. The actual TV part was a blur, it went so quick, even though we were in the studio for two hours,” said Helen, who has worked at Crantock Bakery for nine years.
“They say to you, ‘Don’t worry about the cameras, just talk naturally, you’re fine!’, but you look up and there are six cameras pointing at you and you don’t know what to say!”
“I had my hair and my makeup done, and then I showed Tom, Matt and two Australian female cooks, who were guests on the show, how to make a pasty. Then everyone had a try themselves. We had all the ingredients ready to go, so all they had to do was place the ingredients on the pastry and crimp it. I judged who made the best pasties - it was the boys versus the girls, so of course the girls had to win!”
In her job as Production Supervisor at Crantock Bakery, Helen sees thousands of pasties pass in front of her each day on the crimping line, where she makes sure her team of crimpers maintain the high-quality hand finish on each pasty.
Her experience makes her well-qualified to judge the efforts of the TV presenters:
“Tom Parker Bowles was quite a good crimper, Matt Tebbutt was terrible, and the two girls were good but they tried to fill their pasty up so much that you could feed a whole family on it! I was impressed at how quickly they picked it up because not many people do.
“At Crantock Bakery it takes six weeks of training to be a fully-fledged member of the crimping line. You can learn to crimp in a few days, but then you’ve got to get your speed up, and perfect it, keep it neat and tidy. When I was a girl I had to practice on plasticine.”
And what’s the secret of good crimping? For Helen it all comes down to one thing: “Nice pastry. Nice textured pastry will always give you a better crimp.”
ENDS
Images
High resolution images for media use.
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| Crantock Bakery's Helen Hambly, who demonstrated how to make a Cornish pasty on the UKTV Food show 'Market Kitchen' |
Hand crimping the Cornish pasty. |
Each pasty has between 17 and 21 individual crimps. |
A tray of Cornish pasties ready for baking. |
Notes to Editors
Crantock Bakery is an award-winning manufacturer of Cornish pasties and bake-off products. Founded in 1981, the company employs over 150 people at their purpose-built bakery near Newquay in Cornwall. Following a multi-million programme of investment the 27,000 sq ft premises last year produced over 19 million pasties - all hand-crimped in the traditional Cornish way.
The continually-expanding product range includes sausage rolls, hand-raised pies, scones and 30 different pasties. The company is highly adept at developing bespoke products for their customers, who range from independent bakers to foodservice suppliers and supermarkets throughout the UK and Europe.
Crantock Bakery is the 2008 British Bakery Manufacturer of the Year.
Media Contact - PR on behalf of Crantock Bakery.
Jim Michell at Barefoot Media.
Telephone: +44 (0)1208 895089
Email: jim@barefootmedia.co.uk |
