The origin story for this week’s review goes all the way back to last December, and involves a chap called Chris.
I was at home recovering from Covid, minding my own business, and I saw that Chris had sent a message to the blog’s Facebook page containing a video of him and his mates having dinner on a Tuesday night at Masakali. It had just opened at the time. To be honest I was just relieved it wasn’t hatemail, but it was rather sweet to see the camera panning round a group of friends enjoying dinner together. “Just sending you a video message, which is a bit weird” Chris began, before telling me I really should try Masakali. “It’s the restaurant place opposite TGI Friday that always changes. Love you Edible Reading! Please come here before it closes!”
I took my time – I blame the Covid – but then of course I got round to it a few weeks back, and when I did a comment popped up on the Facebook post about it. “The video message outcome!”, Chris said to a friend, one of his fellow diners. I resolved to be a little bit quicker acting on Chris’ next recommendation – it seemed the least I could do – and I got my opportunity when he chipped in after my controversial visit to the mediocre Honesty at Thames Quarter.
Chris knew just how I could get over the disappointment of that meal. If I wanted a seriously good pain au chocolat, he said, I needed to get myself to U. Bakery in Crowthorne. It was a stone’s throw from the train station, so no fuss to get to. He sent me a message with more details, telling me that the owner Uri was from Tel Aviv and the range of baked goods included plenty of stuff you couldn’t get elsewhere. “I can tell you with certainty that you won’t be disappointed” he added. “If you don’t agree I’ll pay for your train fare!”
How could I argue with an endorsement like that? So I did my research, and made plans to hop on the Gatwick train last Saturday, just in time for lunch in Crowthorne. The homework I’d done backed up what Chris had told me: U. Bakery opened last spring, owner Uri Zilberman did indeed hail from Tel Aviv and he was keen to offer a menu inspired by the food he grew up with. That meant, among other things, challa and chocolate babka, neither of which you often see round these parts. The smelly, tired old Gatwick train was packed that morning, but I at least felt like I was taking it to go somewhere better.
U. Bakery is literally two minutes’ walk from Crowthorne station and was very full when I got there. It’s a corner plot with tables outside on both sides, nearly all of which were occupied by couples and families enjoying the sun. Plenty of dog walkers, too, which was unsurprising with all the wide open space nearby. Inside I think the place seated about sixteen and again a lot of the tables were full, with a big queue in place, some waiting for tables, some grabbing loaves and coffee to go. The whole thing had that tasteful, muted, Scandi look to it – the baked goods were all on display under glass behind the counter and through a door to the left you could see the bakery, where everything on sale was produced.
The place was bright and sunny, light pouring in through the big windows, and had the happy bustle of success. And I thought to myself that Chris might be on to something, because I couldn’t think of anywhere in Reading that combined this kind of style and polish with goods baked on the premises. You had the Collective, which had this kind of aesthetic but bought their stuff in, or Geo Café, which made good pastries, but didn’t bake most of its own bread and had a more homely feel. Or, of course, there was Rise which has plenty of fans but has no space for customers to eat in.
No, on the face of it U. Bakery was the whole package – and racking my brain the only place I could think of that was anything like it was Exeter’s rather magical Exploding Bakery, just round the corner from its own train station. If you’d told me I could have something even a little like the Exploding Bakery a thirteen minute train journey from Reading I might have exploded myself, with jubilation. But anyway, looking good was less than half the battle: it was time to try the merchandise.
I’d been hoping to try the much vaunted pain au chocolat but by the time I got there, a smidge before noon, pretty much all the pastries were gone: I now understand from looking at U. Bakery’s Instagram that pastries in general and cruffins in particular shift fast after the bakery opens at 9am. But there was still an excellent range of sweet treats, many of which looked enormously tempting – Basque cheesecake, blueberry muffins, orange polenta cake and that babka. Easter being round the corner there were also hot cross buns and chocolate hot cross buns, although regrettably the latter still came with dried fruit which ruled them out for me.
A few savoury options were on display too – huge, spiralling feta swirls, filo bourekas stuffed with cheese. And then there was a range of sandwiches – mozzarella, gouda, tuna or roasted veg. They also sold big squares of rosemary focaccia, although I wasn’t quite sure why you’d pick one of these with no filling, or oil to dip it in. Whether by accident or design, nearly everything was vegetarian and the rest was pescatarian, and I heard the staff running some customers through a decent range of gluten free options including a potato sourdough which nearly made it home with me.
Prices struck me as hugely reasonable, especially when you got an idea of the work that went into everything, so cakes were between three and four pounds and those sandwiches were just shy of six pounds. I thought back to my trip to Honesty at the start of February, a place which on paper had claimed to be everything it seemed U. Bakery actually was, and I understood why Chris had told me to check out this place.
Of course, none of that would have mattered if the stuff from U. Bakery had been as underwhelming as Honesty’s output. But that never felt like it was going to happen, and once I took my order to the table I’d bagged and began to tuck in I was delighted that the hype was more than justified. My mozzarella sandwich was outstanding stuff. I sometimes think the clamour about burrata has relegated mozzarella to the status of also-ran, but great mozzarella is a wondrous thing, and the best thing you can do with it is serve it cold and fresh in thick discs, not heat it up, stretch it out and kill its magic.
Here it was its best self, and it came with gorgeous cherry tomatoes, red and yellow bombs of sweetness, some salad and a glug of balsamic vinegar which transformed it from components to a composition. But the thing I liked best of all about this sandwich, and there was plenty to choose from, is that the bread was the star of the show. It was a long, thin pretzel roll with that distinctive taste, the slightly glazed exterior and little salt crystals. It had the structure to stand up to all the goodies that had been put in it, not dry, not mushy from the balsamic, a great roll in harmony with a great filling.
What a sandwich! What a great way to spend just over a fiver and just under fifteen minutes on a train. Lunchtimes next week, I thought to myself, would be pretty dreary – and good luck finding anything of this quality in Reading for approaching the same price.
U. Bakery’s cinnamon bun was a triumph, too. More like a kanelbulle than a more ho-hum cinnamon swirl, it was a dense and sticky knot of sweet and lacquered joy. I tore into it and tore it apart, enjoying every mouthful. I think it’s possibly the best cinnamon bun I’ve had in this country, and up there with anything I can dimly remember from Copenhagen four years ago. It made me wish I’d got there earlier so I could try the pastries, although that would have meant sitting around like a lemon for quite some time until lunch. Maybe this was why all the Crowthorne residents sitting in the café looked so at ease with their life choices, because they didn’t have to rely on Great Western bloody Railways to get there.
If U. Bakery’s weakest link was its coffee, that’s not to say it wasn’t good. It came in an extremely tasteful cup, which by the looks of it they sell in the shop, and although my first sip made me think it had some lingering bitterness which might keep it out of the top tier, I found as I worked my way through it that it was a very creditable latte.
This is the point in the review where I wish I was telling you about the Basque cheesecake; I saw a portion go past to another table, simultaneously looking burnished and fluffy, and I thought is it greedy to go back up? And I nearly did, but I’m getting married in a couple of months and I keep telling myself that when I stand in the Town Hall, wearing a suit for the first time in something like five years, I’d ideally like to be ever so slightly less corpulent than I am now. It probably won’t happen, but I have to at least give myself a fighting chance.
Even so, I could easily see how you could settle in at U. Bakery for longer – grab another coffee, try one of those savoury snackettes or another cake, watch the line of people snaking in to collect their treasures. Everyone was so happy to be there, and the staff were uniformly all smiles and sunshine. I heard the spiel, obviously frequently delivered, explaining that you had to be there early for cruffins. One customer, walking away with an armful, said “it’s not for me, my wife’s in the car”, which may or may not have been true. On a warmer day, those tables outside would have looked mighty tempting, too.
All told, my bill came to just under twenty pounds, although that’s because I also picked up a little bag of chocolate chip shortbread to take home; I’d been under strict orders to bring something back with me. We ate them a couple of nights later in front of Interior Design Masters, and if you struggle to believe that a bag of six dense little shortbread biscuits, crumbly but with a hint of chewiness, shot through with plenty of dark chocolate, can be worth seven quid, all I’ll say is that U. Bakery might just change your mind. They just about changed mine.
The trains back from Crowthorne are hourly, so with time to kill I hopped next door to The Hive, which is more of a café by day and a craft beer bar by night, and sat there with a beer and a paperback. The Hive, like U. Bakery, is the kind of place Reading just doesn’t have – the closest was the Grumpy Goat, before it closed, although the new Siren Craft place due to open on Friar Street will change the landscape considerably.
It was a lovely place to while away the time, full of people watching opportunities (and, again, plenty of those people had dogs), there was outside space for when the weather was good and aside from the half dozen or so beers on keg the fridges were groaning with interesting stuff, some of it from breweries I’d never heard of. And I thought how curious it was – Crowthorne was kind of a one horse town, with just two places I might want to visit, but they happened to be side by side and between them, offering coffee, beer and baked goods, they ticked a lot of my personal boxes. The Hive also did food, including charcuterie boards, and I made a mental note for next time.
So there you have it – a very useful tip, from the man who sent me a random video three months ago. And I’m very grateful that he did, because otherwise I might never have heard about U. Bakery at all, let alone paid a visit. Having done so, I could appreciate why the people of Crowthorne might have been keeping it to themselves, but I don’t see why they should have all the fun. So thank you very much, Chris. You don’t have to reimburse the train fare, although I know you never expected that you’d need to. I might have to invoice you later in the year, though, to help support my baked goods habit as it careers out of control.
U. Bakery – 8.2
198 Duke’s Ride, Crowthorne, RG45 6DS
Edible Reading 