Most people over 40 find their mouth watering when they remember the back-street bakeries of their childhood - a granary loaf made by Berry's of Headington, or lardy cake from Kingston Road.

A long-gone bakery in Shotteswell, near Banbury, was the inspiration for Bread and Co, a business that aims to re-create the traditional taste of English bread.

It was set up by Richard Rawlings, a former agronomist and his brother Matthew, an engineer by training.

Mr Rawlings said: "Matthew made fantastic bread, as a hobby, and friends asked: Why can't we buy bread like this in the shops?' "Matthew's work took him around the world and he had a young family, so he wanted something closer to home. I had got to the stage where I thought enough was enough. I was looking for a new challenge.

"We spent about a year doing market research and decided that we would only make bread using the time-honoured process which was used until about 1961, when they invented the Chorleywood process."

The latter allowed traditional slow fermentation to be replaced by high-speed industrial mixers. This, rather than the electric slicing machines, was the great sliced bread' invention.

It allowed bread factories to churn out loaves in 15 minutes, using low-grade wheat, rather than more expensive strong' flour imported from North America.

The process also needs flour improvers, emulsifiers, conditioners and other additives which keep the bread soft and stop the ageing process.

The Rawlings brothers were equally passionate about ingredients - no trans fats from hydrogenated vegetable oils, preservatives or artificial ingredients.

But having set up the bakery together four years ago at Wardington, near Banbury, they gradually realised they had different ambitions.

Matthew has now moved to Northumberland, where he produces small quantities of bread on a wood-fired oven, while Richard's Oxfordshire business has grown rapidly and is poised for further expansion.

Next month, he is moving to a purpose-designed bakery on Banbury's Johnson Park - just around the corner from the Fine Lady bakery, one of the biggest factories in Europe, producing 72,000 loaves an hour.

With split shifts and a third oven, Bread and Co will just manage 5,000 a night - delivered fresh each morning for up to 100 customers.

They include delicatessens such as Olives in Oxford High Street, Gatineau patisserie in Summertown, gastro-pubs such as the Fishes in North Hinksey and dozens of upmarket restaurants such as Eight At The Thatch in Thame, run by Jeremy and Jane Hooper, winners of TV series The Restaurant.

The business has grown with minimal advertising, Richard says, because the chefs and owners of real food' businesses all know each other and word-of-mouth recommendation is worth more than any other marketing.

The core of Bread and Co is sourdough bread, made from dough fermented with natural leaven. Years before the advent of fresh' yeast, bread was made to rise by using the natural yeasts in wheat - a fermentation process that takes more than 15 hours.

Flour and water are added to the mixture each day, and this becomes the dough for the next day's baking.

The resulting loaves are open-textured and have a flavour which aficionados say is unbeatable. Bread and Co was named in Marwood Yeatman's book, The Last Food of England, as one of the four best sourdough bread makers in the country. The company's first shop, opened in Chipping Campden in January, has been a runaway success.

It sells cakes pastries, sandwiches and coffee as well as bread, and the formula will be repeated in a new shop due to open in Warwick in February.

Richard said: "We are looking for other sites. I think it would be unwise to open a string of bread shops straight away, but we hope to have half a dozen by the end of February."

The three delivery lorries criss-cross the area around Banbury, south as far as Oxford, and went inside the M25 for the first time last month.

With turnover hitting £850,000, Mr Rawlings reckons he will need another four staff next year, taking numbers up to almost 20.

But he still enjoys the challenge of finding new products and new markets. Wheat prices have soared - good news for farmers - so bread prices have gone up, but customers are willing to pay the extra, he claims.

"It's all grist to the mill," he said. "So much of life these days isn't fun, but I never wake up in the morning not wanting to go to work."