A little slice of Swiss bread in central London

Keystone / Arno Balzarini

Every year, around 30,000 Swiss leave their homeland to settle abroad. In London, Tanja Burri and André Brogli offer them a slice of home.

Ashburnham Road in Ham in the south of London is an example of typical English suburbia with brick houses, neat front gardens and dreary backyards. However, a red and white plastic calf doesn’t quite fit into the picture. It is the mascot of the Swiss Bakery where André Brogli has been toiling since the early hours of the morning.

“Solij, my employee and sous-chef, is still making Berner Zwiebelkuchen (Bernese onion tart) right now. We have to make it fresh every day, because it sells extremely well, people like it a lot,” says Brogli.

In addition to Bernese onion tart, the Swiss Bakery in Ham also sells St. Gallen bread, Seeländer Ruchbrot (a type of rye bread), Büürli (traditional Swiss bun) or spelt bread.
 

The plastic calf stands in front of the entrance to the Swiss bakery in London. SRF/PATRIK WÜLSER

“An English bread is usually a white bread. Sugar is often used in addition to flour in the production process. The bread is often very soft. In Switzerland, we use a variety of different flours for our breads: Wheat, rye or spelt flour. But that is not common in England.”

To sample the variety of Swiss bread, customers from all over the UK flock to Ham. It is not be unusual for the Swiss Abroad to come to London on Saturday even from as far away as Birmingham, Wales or Scotland.

The shop tries to soothe homesickness with the red and white calf the cuckoo clock, and the sounds of Radio Swiss Pop accompanied with Berner Züpfe (Bernese butterbread). A Swiss expat who has lived in Scotland for twenty years recently cried with joy when she entered the shop for the first time, says business partner Tanja Gugger.

Besides bread, there is something for the sweet toothed too . SRF/PATRIK WÜLSER

Those who pack their bags and leave Switzerland are in search of the other and the foreign. In London, Quebec or Nairobi, you quickly realise that Switzerland is neither the navel nor the reference point of the world.

But many still miss what they left behind such as the mountains, the mother tongue and bread. 

“It’s just so beautiful here. It is a piece of home. When I come to this bakery, I always feel like I’m a bit at home in Switzerland. I can also speak Swiss German here, which I can’t really do anywhere in London,” says a Bernese customer who grew up in Africa and now lives with her family in London.

The Swiss Bakery team in London. SRF/PATRIK WÜLSER

The 42-year-old André Brogli from Zurich and the 41-year-old Tanja Gugger from Ins in canton Bern left for Switzerland 12 years ago after finishing hotel school. In London, they first produced small bread rolls in a garage, which they delivered to restaurants and hotels in an old van.

One of their first customers was the Swiss top chef Anton Mosimann. And he still orders rolls from the Swiss Bakery when he occasionally has to cook for royal guests at Windsor Castle, according to Brogli and Gugger.

For the past four years, they have no longer been travelling by van. Their bread probably even ends up on the king’s table from time to time.