We all know that nothing really beats the smell and the taste of freshly baked artisan made bread. It's probably why many of us make a beeline for our favourite bakery at the weekend to stock up with all manner of freshly baked treats to help see us through the weekend.
There's no doubt that in recent years bakeries have made a significant comeback to our high streets, with people more conscious about what they but, what they eat and who makes their food and where is all comes from it's no surprise that many of us are inspired by the irresistible content many small artisan bakeries pop on their social media feeds - so much we beat a path to their door to get a slice of the action.
Which is why it's no surprise that Lovingly Artisan Bakery, based at Plumgarths, near Kendal, and Altrincham Market, Greater Manchester have been named in a prestigious list of 'best in UK and Europe'.
The Northwest bakery has been named among the top 10 in the UK. The UK wide list has been compiled by price comparison and review website Idelo, who analysed the social media footprint, hashtags (#lovinglyartisan) and post interactions, across each artisan bakery's Instagram and TikTok feed to identify which were the most popular country wide.
This careful analysis saw Lovingly Artisan ranked ninth in the UK with 1,136 Instagram posts and 461,300 TikTok views to their name.
Idealo uncovered the most popular bakeries by pulling together a group of UK bakeries from four seed lists drawn from The Times, Financial Times, Bakery Info and Booking.com. The Idealo team also pulled together a group of European bakeries from four other seed lists drawn from Standard, World of Wanderlust, Pretty Wild World and Save a Train.
From there Idealo team then examined the number of Instagram posts for the bakeries' hashtags, before taking the total number of posts. Hashtags were chosen based on the name of the bakery and cross-referenced with the Instagram page of each bakery to check which hashtag they used themselves. The same methodology was then used to collate the number of TikTok views for the bakeries' hashtags.
Commenting on their ranking, husband and wife Aidan Monks and Catherine Connor, owners and bakers at Lovingly Artisan, said: "Being named among the best bakeries in the UK is fabulous news for the whole team. We use our social media platforms to showcase a little of what we do at our Lake District and Manchester bread stores, featuring in this top 10 list shows that we are on the right track doing what we're doing, and that people are noticing what a family run and owned artisan bakery based in the Northwest are up to on two global platforms."