My wife (Rhonda) and I (Laurie) run a small bakery in rural South East Queensland, Australia.
After starting from absolute from scratch - no oven, no bakery and no sourdough baking experience - we have built a commercially successful and sustainable bakery in three years. We have a relatively small Alan Scott wood-fired oven and bake once a week for wholesale sales into the region and twice a month for the Darling Downs Farmer's Market in Toowoomba. We are committed NOT to work ourselves into the ground. When this begins to feel like a real job - we quit!
We are committed to genuine sourdough (no cheating) and local organic flours and ingredients. We love to use our own home grown herbs and fruits (eg mulberries). We supplement our weekly bread bake (200 - 250 loaves) with a range of baked muesli, pizza bases and twice baked sourdough (a great way to use that unsold or cruddy looking bread!)
We are blessed to be located only forty minutes from the biggest organic flour mill in Australia (Kialla Pure Foods) and only fifteen minutes from our mate Barry Bowden's Red Gum mill at Pampas. Barry has an biodynamic farm as well as a mill that produces some great flours!
I have reached the stage where I can now bake a pretty fair sourdough fairly consistently while still being able to bugger up an oven load occasionally! As Alan Scott once said to me, "Bread is like wine ... every bake will be different ... you are baking today's vintage."
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