Outpost Bakery wins national sourdough medals after first year in business

Outpost Bakery in Eccleston turned Britain’s Best Loaf 2026 into a breakout moment, taking silver in Seeded Sourdough for its Aughton Sourdough Loaf and bronze in International for its Sourdough Baguette. For a bakery that is just over a year old, the result gave the Lancashire business national hardware from a competition that drew 200 entries, the largest field in the event’s history.

That scale matters. Britain’s Best Loaf, now in its 13th edition, was judged anonymously at the NEC Birmingham on Tuesday 14 April 2026, with loaves assessed on external appearance, internal structure, aroma, taste and mouthfeel. The panel included bakery specialists from Tesco and M&S, lecturers, NPD technologists and other experts, so Outpost’s medals were not a nod to branding or local buzz. They signaled that the bakery’s sourdough stood up across the technical markers that matter most in a blind tasting.

Outpost’s story carries extra weight because it is not a long-established institution resting on reputation. Co-founder Katrina Bozikovic and co-owner Felix Stenhouse started the business after working at Moor Hall in Aughton, Lancashire, and built Outpost as an Australian-inspired Lancashire bakery serving artisanal breads, pastries and coffee. The bakery’s own hiring push shows the pace of its growth: it has been looking to add another head baker and commis baker to a five-strong team. That combination of fine-dining discipline and small-batch production is exactly the kind of background that can translate into a loaf with strong structure, clean flavor and consistency from bake to bake.

For sourdough fans, the practical lesson is right there in the judging sheet. A medal-winning loaf has to look the part, but it also has to hold its shape, develop aroma, deliver balanced flavor and finish with the right mouthfeel. Outpost’s Aughton Sourdough Loaf and Sourdough Baguette suggest a bakery paying attention to grain choice, fermentation control and bake discipline rather than chasing novelty for its own sake. In a competition field this large, that kind of precision is what gets noticed.

The broader result also underlined how well independent bakeries performed this year, with Peak & Stone Bakery in Chesterfield taking both Plain Sourdough and Flavoured Sourdough titles and MOST Bakery in Altrincham winning Seeded Sourdough. For Outpost, the medals made a simple point in the most public way possible: a small bakery from Eccleston can already compete with the country’s best.