A HEALTHY bakery in Summertown founded by a woman battling breast cancer has expanded into 'Quinoa Valley' to bring its bread and baked goods to the wider market.

When Melissa Sharp was diagnosed with cancer in 2010, aged just 36, she became obsessed with making her diet, and the diet of others, healthier.

With support from her partner Leo Campbell, Modern Baker was launched in 2014 and three years on it has proved a huge success in the community and has opened a new kitchen and laboratory in Kidlington to create the perfect loaf.

Ms Sharp said: "I found a lump and it turned out to be home an aggressive cancer, I was only 36, and it was very serious.

"I spent so much time researching nutrition and talking to nutritionists throughout my treatment and after.

"It was clear to me that my diet for the rest of my life was even more important."

She quit her job at a management consultancy, signed up for nutrition courses and spent the next three years visiting organic bakeries, delis and restaurant all over the world before taking her products to Worton Farm near Cassington.

After proving popular she and Leo set up Modern Baker, which focusses on baking breads, cakes and pastries using only pure ingredients such as traditional grains, natural sugars and sourdough.

Modern Baker was recently awarded a government grant to research and produce healthy fermented sourdough bread that could be made accessible to everyone.

The government's Innovate UK gave them more than £660,000 to set up a kitchen and research laboratory in Kidlington, being dubbed as Quinoa Valley, to carry out the study over the next two years.

Mr Campbell said major companies were letting people down by producing unhealthy loaves of bread.

He said: "Innovate UK said it was concerned that around nine per cent of the NHS' budget is spent on diet-related chronic illness.

"The big companies are doing the public no service and taking the easier route to making money.

"Our vision is to bring healthy bread and baked goods into the mainstream."

The firm's new kitchen facility was completed earlier this month and researchers from Newcastle University's Molecular Biosciences department have moved in already, alongside the bakers.

The lab even mimics the human digestive system to monitor how the body would react to various types of bread.

The North Oxford man added: "Bread and indeed gluten shouldn't be demonised.

"People have been fermenting bread for 10,000 years and it's been really good for the human race.

"But in the past 100 years we have forgotten about it.

"That's why we are called Modern Baker, we want to use our knowledge and technology available to us to produce healthy bread."

Since it opened its doors in 2014, all surplus food, including cakes, bread and biscuits has been given to The Gatehouse - a centre for the city's homeless in Woodstock Road.