The tiny new Scottish island bakery that's inspiring morning visitors with its moreish artichoke cruffins

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If you’re drawn towards a delicious smell on the outskirts of Portree, chances are that it’s buttery French pastries.

That’s because this is the unobtrusive location of the new micro-bakery and Viennoiserie from Birch, who already have their original four-year-old Isle of Skye cafe and another one-year-old-cafe in Inverness.

This sit in or takeaway destination, which allows them to create all the baked goods for their outlets, is located at Unit 4, Broom Place, and is also the headquarters of their coffee roastery.

We spoke to the owner, Niall Munro - son of Donnie Munro, former lead singer of Runrig - about the new Birch Bakery and Roastery.

Why did you decide to open the third outlet?

I've always wanted to take the baking side of things in house, as every other aspect of what we make and serve in our cafes is done by us. Having the roastery in Portree allowed us to expand our offering by fitting it out as a micro bakery too, mainly to supply our Portree shop daily. For the new bakery space, we've invested in a proofer, laminator, ovens, mixers, thermos and all of the usual utensils you'd associate with baking, so it’s really kitted out.

What have your bestsellers been so far?

Our cruffins and almond croissants are our bestsellers for sure. We've noticed that people are happy to experiment with the flavours we make which makes it very exciting for us in terms of coming up with new ideas and concepts. This week we tried out a Jerusalem artichoke and white chocolate crème pâtissière cruffin and it was super popular.

Any queues?

There's a queue pretty much every morning at the cafe in Portree during the summer season. The bakery space is a bit more hidden away on the outskirts of Portree, so there's a more chilled flow on the days we're open up there. We see lots of locals coming to that space, which is nice too. It's so nice to see as many locals as we do, along with tourists from all over the world. A local chap, Davie, owns and runs an outdoor shop not too far from us called Inside Out, and is one of our favourite customers. A long black with one sugar and a splash of milk is his order. He'll occasionally indulge in one of our pastries too.

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Is it as popular as your other cafes?

It's hard to compare the bakery to the other cafes, as it's predominantly a production space, used to supply the cafe. It's beautiful, but we only open it three days a week to allow people to get an insight into what we do and to show them a bit more behind the scenes of the coffee roasting side of things too.

Why have you stuck with the simple and minimal look?

In my opinion less is always more, within reason obviously. The vast majority of our furniture in both the cafe and bakery has been made by local joiners. I generally see designs I like or have ideas for something and will approach a few of the local traders we work with to see if they can execute and build it. To date, they've done an incredible job. In the cafe the pendant lights on the bar are from Muuto, ceramics from Cara Guthrie, Caitlin Bowbeer and Sam Sparrow and the beautiful semi abstract/landscape mural was an opening gift from my dad. The floral wreaths are from my partner Shaylea and my mum, who both have a great eye for detail and design.

Tell us about your menu offerings - will they change according to the season and what foraged ingredients do you use?

We're already exploring with lots of different seasonal ingredients. Wild garlic on the savoury side at the moment and rhubarb on the sweet. We'll be utilising the likes of meadowsweet, elderflower, sea buckthorn and seasonal berries once they come in, too. And, of course, I'm always excited for chanterelle season. The meadowsweet is used as a herbal tea, wild garlic in pesto, savoury pastries and to accompany our egg-based brunch dishes, and the sea buckthorn will be used on the sweet side - often being paired with chocolate.

Tell us about the roastery

The roastery has been going for four years now, but for the first two years we were roasting out of a converted shipping container. Since moving into our permanent roastery (and now bakery) space, we've done much more retail as well as wholesale. We tend to rotate coffees on a bi-monthly basis, with three to four on offer at any given time. At the moment, we have three coffees: a natural from Nicaragua; a washed coffee from Colombia; and a natural anaerobic from El Salvador.

The new outlet is headed by Parisian pastry chef, Tessa Biriotti - how are they getting on with supplying all the cafes?

So Tessa currently just supplies our shop in Portree and the Bakery and Roastery at the weekends. We have another full time pastry chef based in Inverness, who makes everything in house there. Tessa has been getting on amazingly well, working alongside Ros and Chloe who also bake part time for the Portree cafe.

How many pastries do you eat per day?

I try to limit myself to one per day. A straight up butter croissant and filter coffee is my go to.

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Any other Skye food businesses that you rate?

Scorrybreac, Café Cùil, Edinbane Lodge and The Hungry Gull are some of my favourite businesses here on the island. Scorrybreac is run and owned by my brother. Cafe Cuil is run by one of my best friends, Clare Coghill, and Edinbane Lodge is owned and run by Calum Montgomery, a friend that I grew up with. They're all doing great things for the culinary scene here.

Birch Bakery and Roastery, 4 Broom Place, Portree, Isle of Skye www.birch.coffee