By NATHALIE JORDI

Alison Parente realized a few years ago, when she was unable to find the baker she needed for one of her artisan food businesses, that Britain needed to do something about the loss of traditional culinary skills.

“We couldn’t find anyone to run the Bakeshop,” she said, which is one of several businesses, including a butcher, a farm shop, a cheesemaking facility and a craft art gallery, that she and her husband, William, manage on the Welbeck Estate, a vast swath of electric-green Nottinghamshire land in the center of England. Although the estate is still privately owned, there is public access to the shops.

Unlike France and Italy, and more like the United States, Britain has seen its people let traditional food skills languish with the move toward frozen and prepared foods that occurred in the last century. Now, few people know how to do the work that Mrs. Parente is seeking. “People have become alienated from their own skills,” she said.

At the same time, a dynamic and popular network of food writers, bloggers and television personalities waxes rhapsodic about locally made foods, and a groundswell of consumer support has poised the market for expansion.

The focus on small-scale artisans and local producers at London’s famous Borough Market, often invoked in the same breath as La Boqueria in Barcelona and the Rue Mouffetard in Paris, is barely 10 years old, and English cuisine, derided for centuries, has made a comeback.

To meet the need, Mrs. Parente assembled a brain trust of British food stars specializing in fermented foods, which include cheese, beer, bread and charcuterie, among other things, and are a central part of the curriculum. Fermented foods are tricky to get right because the bacteria used to make them are so unpredictable.

She secured financing from the East Midlands Development Agency, among other sources. The result of her work, the School of Artisan Food, structured as a nonprofit, began by offering short courses on subjects such as wild yeast baking, dressing pheasant and making elderflower wine.

Next September, its two-year program will accept 30 students. The 19th-century former fire station of the Welbeck Estate is being renovated to accommodate wood-burning bread ovens, stainless-steel cheese vats and curing rooms.

The program will combine practical teaching - hands-on baking, brewing, cheesemaking or butchery - with management and small-business courses, as well as academic work on topics such as the industrialization of the food system and terroir in the 21st century.

“We anticipate the students to be a mix of young people, baby boomers looking for a second career and farmers looking to diversify the family farm,” Mrs. Parente said.


A country sees
its traditional food
skills languish.


Professor Harry West, a food anthropologist who teaches at the University of London and is one of the Welbeck school’s academic advisers, believes the timing is right. “There’s a huge enthusiasm about artisan foods in the U.K. right now,” he said.

“There’s incredible market potential. But the enthusiasm is ahead of the practical skills base. The group of people who can turn flour into a loaf of bread without additives and machinery is tiny.”

The school will teach not just one party line. “We want to give people enough information to make their own decisions,” said Gareth Kennedy, the school’s managing director. “If they study with us, and then choose to work for a supermarket like Sainsbury’s or the Wal-Mart group, they’ll be informed. In fact, I hope they do.”