A new bakery has joined the line-up at Radcliffe Market - and it's got quite the story behind it.
Lo.So.Do comes from 27-year-old Lorna Black, who until recently was working as a freelance TV costume supervisor with contracts including Coronation Street and Netflix's The Crown.
Once Covid-19 struck, Lorna found herself without her usual work and income, and decided to revisit an old childhood hobby - baking.
Her new bakery will specialise in sourdough loaves of bread, but you'll also find sourdough croissants, bagels, cinnamon rolls and more.
Lorna is proud that her products have no additives - it's just flour, water and salt in her bread.
While many of us turned our hands to a banana bread or 10 during lockdown, Lorna actually has a much more professional background than most.
She first got to grips with baking in the kitchen with her grandmother as a child, but loved it so much she's undertaken baking and patisserie courses later in life.
Lorna said: "I'd just been doing it as a hobby on the side of my TV work, I used to stay up all night experimenting with different breads and taking them onto set the next day. Which my colleagues loved! It was a privilege to give people bread.
"The TV industry shut down completely over lockdown, I lost all my contracts, so it seemed like the right time to get back into it - when I could find flour that is!
"My boyfriend was getting fat because I kept feeding him bread and cake," she laughed. "So I posted it on our local Facebook page and got some regular customers, which was great practice."
Also over lockdown she put herself through the Prince's Trust's business course to help her get to grips with the operations side of running a business.
She'll be joining Radcliffe Market, which has undergone a huge transformation in recent years to become a bustling market and food hall.
Lorna said: "Radcliffe Market's been really keen to get local businesses in and encourage people to shop locally, it's very community-focused and conscientious.
"I've been experimenting with different sourdoughs. There are a lot of places in south Manchester doing sourdough bakes, like Trove, but there's nowhere round here.
"It's just been such a whirlwind couple of months, I'm just riding it now and seeing where it takes me.
"None of this would have happened if it hadn't been for lockdown."
Lo.So.Do is open at Radcliffe Market on Thursdays, Fridays and Saturdays, from 9am until it sells out.
