For the second year running a Palmers Green shop will be one of the businesses featured in the ITV series Britain's Best Bakery.
Last year Aroma Patisserie in Green Lanes was a competitor, making it through to the Southern Regional Finals. This year it's the turn of Yasar Halim in Hedge Lane, which incorporates a bakery that turns out a large range of savoury and sweet products, mostly with a Turkish flavour. Yasar Halim will feature in the programme to be broadcast at 4pm on Tuesday 4th February.
It's no accident that a Palmers Green business has been featured two years running, as the presence of significant numbers of people from, or with their roots in, Cyprus and Turkey is reflected in the number of local shops specialising in Greek, Turkish and Cypriot foods - some of them bakeries, others larger food stores incorporating their own bakeries, where bread, cakes and pastries are made from scratch. While the well-known supermarkets might boast "in-stores bakeries", these are only used to finish off bakery products which have been manufactured elsewhere.
In addition to Aroma and Yasar Halim, the other local shops that bake bread on the premises include:
- Lefteris Bakery and the Old Country Bakery (both in Green Lanes, near the Berkshire Gardens bus stop)
- an instore bakery in the TFC supermarket (the former Cock public house) at the North Circ junction
- instore bakeries in the Aksu Food Centre and Oz Tum supermarket - both in Green Lanes near the Tottenhall Road bus stop
- Sevil & Kanal in Tottenhall Road (near the junction with Wolves Lane).
These bakeries all produce a mixture of English, Cypriot and Turkish bread styles. A different style of bread is on sale every Sunday morning at the Palmers Green Community Market, where artisan-style breads and pastries are on sale from the Tottenham-based Flourish Bakery.
And for traditional English-style cakes, where better to go than Baskervilles? And later this year will see the opening of the Palmers Greenery Cafe in Broomfield Park, a community venture run by volunteers who will be baking cakes at home.
