Why I turned my back on engineering to open bakery and cafe the Black Wheat Club in York

Thomasz, is it it turns out, isn’t normally called that. “Tomek, my mum would call me Tomek, which is like a short version,” he says.

Tomek, who at 36 is two years older than Marta, studied engineering, but by the time he had finished his master’s degree, he knew he wanted to be a chef, having worked in kitchens as a student. He credits Marta with motivating him to become a chef.

So why the Black Wheat Club?

“Buckwheat in France is called blé noir and a direct translation means black wheat,” says Tomek. “So buckwheat is really popular in Poland, everyone knows, buckwheat, and your mum would serve it as a side dish to your stew. And it happens that galettes are made with buckwheat, too. That was the idea, just as a thank you to buckwheat as it’s been around our lives for so long. We wanted to call the place Black Wheat Club. And it sounds cool, so that is one of the reasons we decided to go for that.”

While running Krep, which is still open in the market, Tomek and Marta had long dreamed of opening a café or restaurant, without knowing how it would turn out. Their new café/bistro sells sourdough bread and buns, brunch dishes and some of the best coffee around. A service of small plates on three evenings a week has just started, too.

“This was in our heads for years,” says Tomek. “A concept and project a little bit closer to our hearts.”

The walls are painted a shade of bluey black, fittingly enough, and everywhere feels smart and modern. This is mostly down to Marta.

“Marta is just amazing at that stuff,” says Tomek. “She’s such a creative person, really arty, she can create stuff, design, she’s just natural and that is why Black Wheat looks like this.” There are ten members of staff, and the opening weeks have been busy.

“You can have food cooked by chefs in the kitchen, you can grab something from the counter – it’s going to be focaccia or pastry. We are still working on how to direct this properly, but we want to be a bakery and a brunch place, and soon on the evenings we are going to run a small service with wine and small plates.”

Asked if there is a Polish element to the food, Tomek says: “The biggest reflection of where we come from you can just see in what we cook and what we bake. Bread is definitely like bread we remember from our homes. Bread is the base of everything in Poland.”

Tomek started baking at home in the pandemic, then had to learn how to scale everything up. “It’s not the same, baking one loaf of bread to baking 20 or 30 loaves,” he says.

For a long time, Via Vecchia in Shambles was the only one-off bakery in York, where the bread was baked by Alistair Lawton. He didn’t sell sourdough, believing no-one in York would buy such bread. Now bakers producing sourdough are rising all over the city. Tomek knows them all, as a floury fellowship exists among York’s bakers. They help each other out, rather than guarding their dough.

Phil Clayton is the unofficial godfather of baking in the city. More usually just known as Phil the Haxby Baker, he offers advice to fellow professionals, and to amateur bakers too, as the writer of this article can attest. “He’s a big friend, he helped a lot, he gave us advice,” says Tomek. “He’s amazing. To be fair, we are friends with all the bakeries in York. We know these guys and they are all making a truly amazing product. It’s awe-inspiring and I’m actually really happy that York is kind of big with bakeries right now.”

Bluebird in Acomb has been an influence and an inspiration. As have Little Arras and Cosgriff & Sons. Paul Cosgriff offered sound advice about bread ovens. “He’s a very good friend of ours,” says Tomek.

Flori, the little neighbour bakery in Scarcroft Road, is another favourite for Tomek, where Lotte Rodgers – or Lotte the Baker, as she is also known – and her team make croissants, pastries and buns.

The baking at Black Wheat Club takes place in two rooms on the third floor. As we climb another flight of stairs, Tomek says the refurbishment of the building took almost a year. In the baking room, Sam Battwood starts by explaining his surname. “I was a Batt and my wife was an Eastwood and we just came up with the name,” he says.

Sam has been baking professionally for four years, having trained at the Haxby Bakehouse and before that Little Arras. On the bench before him dough in a large plastic box waits to be turned into sourdough loaves. “This is about half an hour off shaping. I’ve just given it its final fold,” says Sam. The starter that feeds the bread was created three or four months ago. “We are feeding it twice a day, a morning feed and an evening feed. It keeps it really mild. You don’t get much of a sour-tasting bread.”

Tomek adds: “Yes, that’s the balance we are trying to find. When you are serving dishes you don’t want the bread to be over-powering.”

The loaves Sam is about to shape will be ready to sell by tomorrow. There is a Rack Master bread oven for the loaves, and a smaller oven for bread buns, seen rising through the glass in the oven door. The other room is for shaping the bread. As well as a table, and sacks of flour from Shipton Mill and Yorkshire Organic Millers, there is what appears to be a big fridge, only it’s more than that. It’s a retarder/prover that can chill, freeze or prove. “This is designed for us not being forced to come here. So the prover can do it for us,” says Tomek. Bakers often work through the night, but the retarder allows Sam to start at around 5am, not bad for a baker That’s why he took the job, Sam jokes: “I’m just here for the lie-in.”

The Black Wheat Club 52 Fossgate, York YO1 9TF