My grandmother, Polly Pascoe, made pasties in the village of Trevennick, on the north coast of Cornwall, for sixty years.

She wrote her recipe on a little card in 1952. Pencil, in her neat school handwriting. I still have it. It's soft and brown at the edges now, and there's a thumbprint of flour in one corner.

At the bottom, she'd written: 21 crimps. No more, no less. Pepper white, never black.

I learned to make pasties standing on a chair in her kitchen. She'd slap my hand if I grated the swede.

I didn't go into baking at first. I trained as a bookkeeper and worked for a firm of accountants in St Austell for fifteen years. Numbers, receipts, files.

Then, ten years ago, I took a chance. I rented an old bakery on Trevennick harbour and started making Grandma Polly's pasties to sell to holiday-makers.

People queued round the corner.

Within five years, Pascoe's Pasties had a proper bakery on an industrial estate outside Bodmin. Forty staff. Local farm-shop orders across the South West.

Then, three years ago, Greenfields called.

Greenfields was one of the biggest supermarkets in Britain. Six hundred stores.

They wanted to sell my pasties in every single one.

I cried on the phone.