The queue outside Ọjà Bakehouse on Rye Lane starts forming before seven each morning. Inside, Folake Adeyemi is already on her sixth batch of the day—pulling golden, crackle-crusted loaves from the oven that have made her tiny Peckham shop one of the most talked-about bakeries in London.
What makes Adeyemi's bread different is what goes into it. Her signature loaf, the Ọjà Sourdough, is made with a blend of heritage wheat flour and stone-ground ogi (fermented corn flour), a technique she adapted from her grandmother's kitchen in Ibadan, Nigeria. The result is a tangy, slightly sweet crumb with an aroma that regulars describe as utterly addictive.
"My grandmother would laugh if she could see this," Adeyemi says, shaping dough with practised hands at four in the morning. "She made ogi every day—it was just breakfast porridge. She'd never have thought to put it in bread. But fermentation is fermentation. The cultures don't know borders."
Adeyemi left a career in pharmaceutical research to pursue baking in 2023, enrolling at the School of Artisan Food in Nottinghamshire before returning to south London to develop her recipes. She spent eighteen months perfecting the ogi sourdough starter, which she maintains alongside a traditional wheat levain. The bakehouse opened last October in a former dry cleaner's on Rye Lane, and by December, weekend loaves were selling out within ninety minutes.
The menu extends beyond bread. Adeyemi's chin chin pastry twists, spiced with ginger and nutmeg and finished with a dusting of suya pepper, have developed a devoted following. Her plantain and dark chocolate brioche, available only on Saturdays, reliably draws a queue down the block.
Peckham's vibrant West African community has embraced the bakehouse as a gathering place. Adeyemi hosts monthly "Bread and Stories" evenings where neighbours share family recipes and food memories over fresh loaves and palm wine. She has also begun supplying bread to Persepolis and other independent shops along Rye Lane.
"Peckham already has incredible Nigerian food—jollof, suya, pounded yam," she says. "I just wanted to show that our fermentation traditions have something to say to the bread world too. And I think people are listening."
Food critics certainly are. Ọjà Bakehouse was named among the Evening Standard's top new openings, and Adeyemi has been invited to bake at the Real Bread Campaign's annual festival this spring. For a baker who started with her grandmother's ogi pot, the rise has been anything but ordinary.