How to make the dough rise – Kennington bakers see their fundraising cycle ride take off

Three bakers have dreamed up a quest to find Europe’s best croissants.

But they are now raising a lot of dough by attracting sponsors for their heroic – and some would say hopeless – quest over the Channel.

Now that their plans are fully cooked, the sponsorship they have already pulled in will fund grief counselling for people who lost family in the pandemic.

The trio at Alby’s Baker, at The Oval, have already smashed their initial £1,000 target by 150 per cent in a matter of days.

Their inspiration for the trip was a professionally very important hunt for the little curly French puffy pastries on mainland Europe. They need to know this stuff.

But they might end up needing more than just a piece of the pie to help them recover. (That’s enough of the stale jokes, Ed)

They depart on March 19 and hope to complete the 247 miles along L’Avenue Verte to Paris – they hope – on March 23.

They have teamed up with Vauxhall Gardens Community Centre (VGCC) to raise money to provide group counselling sessions for anyone in the local community after two years of the pandemic.

The sessions will take place in the same building as Alby’s Bakery.

Organiser Griffin Dickinson said: “Our initial desire was to offer grief counselling sessions during which members of the community could gather in a safe space and share the all too familiar anguish that comes with loss.

“However after speaking to various people in the community it became clear that providing a counsellor specific to grief would be somewhat niche and therefore potentially alienate those that really needed the help.

“As a result, we plan to use 100 per cent of the donations to VGCC to hold weekly counselling sessions inside the community centre – right above Alby’s Bakery – that will be available to absolutely everyone and anyone.

“It’s extremely exciting and rewarding to know that all money donated will be used to genuinely help people through our own program.

The sessions will be managed in-house so we can rest assured the money goes as far as it possibly can.”

Follow the trio’s instagram updates: @albysbakery