Published on 07/06/2013 07:00
A customer claims a cheese pastie served up by his local bakery was so hot it burned his mouth severely.
Graham Walker, of Garden Street, Todmorden, says that two weeks after eating a spoonful of the pastie, which he bought at Oddie’s Bakery in Bond Street, Todmorden, his mouth was still ulcerated.
Mr Walker, 33, says he has had to miss work to seek medical help for the injury and has struggled to eat or drink normally in the days following the incident on May 20.
He was also concerned about what would have happened if his child had eaten it, he said.
Mr Walker said he was not warned about how hot the pastie might be but the bakery, whose headquarters are in Nelson, Lancashire, said there was a difference of opinion over his version of events.
He had stopped staff putting his pastie and mushy peas container into a bag because he intended to eat it straight away.
“It was a perfect opportunity to tell me it had just come out of the oven.
“I said ‘no, I’m going to be eating it now’.”
A spoonful of peas were not over hot so he followed it with a spoonful of pastie.
“I didn’t realise straight away but when I got home I thought I had burned my mouth,” he said.
He says he rang the bakers who said he had been told it was hot, which he disputes.
“I said even if you did tell me, you don’t expect it to be burning hot,” he said.
He understood goods were supposed to go on a cool down rack after coming out of the oven, he said.
Health and hygiene manager for Oddie’s bakery, Maureen Turner, said there was a difference of opinion over events but she could not comment further on the matter at this point.
“There is very much a difference of opinion of events that occurred at the shop between Mr Walker and members of our staff.
“I can’t say any more at this stage,” she said.
Mr Walker, a self-employed property maintenance worker, said he had to seek medical treatment and had to take medication to kill the pain so he could eat.
He had had to take five days off work and go back to his doctor worried about the possibility of infection.
Speaking at the end of last week he said: “I still can’t have hot drinks and I’m a big tea drinker. I can drink milk.
“The big red mass on the photograph has been replaced with a collection of blisters there,” he said.
Oddie’s is an established family bakery, founded in 1905.
Its main bakehouse is at its Nelson headquarters and it has branches in a number of other East Lancashire towns, including Burnley.
The company invested over the West Yorkshire border in Todmorden when it bought the business from Thomas’s, itself a long-standing bakery in the town, about ten years ago.
