A LOCAL bakery has been named in a prestigious list of best in the UK and Europe.

Lovingly Artisan Bakery, based at Plumgarths, near Kendal, and Altrincham Market, Greater Manchester have been among the top 10 in the UK.

The UK-wide list has been compiled by price comparison and review website Idelo, which analysed the social media footprint, hashtags and post interactions across each artisan bakery’s Instagram and TikTok feed to identify which were the most popular countrywide.

This careful analysis saw Lovingly Artisan ranked ninth in the UK with 1,136 Instagram posts and 461,300 TikTok views.

Idealo uncovered the most popular bakeries by pulling together a group of UK bakeries from four seed lists drawn from The Times, Financial Times, Bakery Info and Booking.com.

The Idealo team also pulled together a group of European bakeries from four other seed lists drawn from Standard, World of Wanderlust, Pretty Wild World and Save a Train. 

From there Idealo team then examined the number of Instagram posts for the bakeries’ hashtags, before taking the total number of posts.

Hashtags were chosen based on the bakery's name and cross-referenced with each bakery's Instagram page to check which hashtag they used. The same methodology was then used to collate the number of TikTok views for the bakeries’ hashtags. 

Commenting on their ranking, husband and wife Aidan Monks and Catherine Connor, owners and bakers at Lovingly Artisan, said: "Being named among the best bakeries in the UK is fabulous news for the whole team.

"We use our social media platforms to showcase a little of what we do at our Lake District and Manchester bread stores, featuring in this top 10 list shows that we are on the right track doing what we’re doing, and that people are noticing what a family run and owned artisan bakery based in the Northwest are up to on two global platforms."