Kevin  Barke is more than a master baker, he is a sculptor in bread. His animal-shaped loaves, displayed in the window of his bakery-cum-cafe, in Wickford, are one of the town’s distinctive attractions.

 

He never wastes an opportunity.

 

When a dangerous snake escaped in the town in 2010, Kevin reproduced its likeness in coils of crust and crumb. His baked snake featured in newspaper reports as far away as Washington DC.

 

Kevin’s enthusiasm for his job and his readiness to go the extra mile is obvious from the shop-front at Barke’s Bakery, even before you meet him. At 59, a time when a lot of old pros are starting to coast, he still loves to experiment with new products.

 

This week’s novelty is a Spanish loaf, full of bits of colourful vegetation. There is also his Wickford bun, recently devised by Kevin when in the mood for invention.

 

He said: “We try a new product out for a week or so. If it doesn’t sell, we move on to something else. If it does sell, like the Wickford bun, we hang on to it. It keeps you fresh, always trying out new things. And you never stop learning.”

 

Kevin went straight into baking after leaving Beauchamps School, in Wickford, and immediately knew that he had found his vocation. He said: “I was never much good at school. I had dyslexia, but nobody knew about it at the time.

 

“I just sort of fell into a baking job, but I loved it from the start. For the first time, I’d found something I could really excel in.”

 

Kevin served a four-year apprenticeship with a master baker in Billericay, studying one day a week at college. The training was comprehensive.

 

He said “English master bakers do everything. In Europe, they specialise – for instance in pastries – but here we do everything, from Bath buns to wedding cakes.”

 

Marked out as a high flyer with yeast in his veins, Kevin was a bakery manager by his early twenties.

 

He said: “I realised I could be putting all that hard work into my own business.” For a couple of years he worked at a second job as an ice cream salesman, switching from hot ovens in the mornings to freezers in the afternoon. Kevin said: “It raised the capital I needed to set up my own business.”

 

Barkes was opened in Wickford’s new Ladygate Centre, 32 years ago, and has been a Wickford institution ever since.

 

Surviving three separate economic recessions, it is the last original business remaining in the Ladygate. Kevin says the main requirement for anyone who wants to succeed as a baker is “hard work”.

 

Even as he says this, Kevin is pacing the bakery floor, checking ovens and mixes, as well as keeping an eye on the icing work being done by apprentice, Connor.

 

In theory, anyone can learn professional baking. In practice, according to Kevin, some bakers: “Just have that natural touch – it’s not something you can explain easily.”