A WOOLSTON baker is hoping to rise to the challenge of the Tiptree World Bread Awards.

Jen Perry is competing against everyone from artisan bread makers and small high street bakers to home bread makers at London’s Westminster Cathedral Hall on Wednesday.

The former Lymm High School student runs the mobile afternoon tea and mobile cookery school Room Forty and was inspired to take part after the success of her sell out bread baking classes.

She has recently announced new beginner classes at Lymm Village Hall to accommodate demand on October 3 and 24.

Jen and her Room Forty bakers and tutors will be entering their white loaf in the competition.

She said: “Competing in the Tiptree World Bread Awards is a first for us – daunting, but very exciting and we’ll be teaching our students to bake the same loaf. We are passionate about baking, passionate about real, additive-free food and delight in passing on our baking skills.

“The feedback that we have had following our classes has been astonishing.

“We have fun teaching and the groups have great fun learning. More importantly we are being inundated with photos of the amazing loaves that our past students have sent us of their bread baking successes at home. Proof indeed that the classes work.

“Watch this space as we’ll be announcing a beginners cake baking class called ‘baking for the terrified’ soon.”

The hands on beginners bread classes, which see you leave with the food you have made, take around three hours with students learning how to make a white loaf, wholemeal loaf, pizza and sodabread.

A series of advanced classes have also been announced for ‘graduates’ of the first class which will take place in the JD Kitchens showroom in Gorsey Lane.

Students will learn how to make focaccia, a cheese and walnut bread and other speciality bakes using the same state-of-the-art Neff ovens used on The Great British Bake Off.

The next class is on Sunday, October 1.

At the Tiptree World Bread Awards everything is made from savoury bread to sourdough and gluten-free to the Great British white. Bread is now a huge industry in the UK with 12 million loaves sold every day. The phenomenon of the artisan bakery has taken off in the past decade.

Beginner classes cost £45 including ingredients and refreshments. Call 357940