After spending a few hours on Sunday at the Yallingup Wood Fired Bakery with Gothard, I came away thinking that what he said was so true!!
Why do we refer to traditional ways and methods, as the alternative now days, when for thousands of years that was just normal!
We are extremely fortunate to have Gothard baking his wonderful wood fired bread just 5 km down the road.
He is an experienced baker who has been baking in the area for 8 years and immigrated from Germany making his bread in the traditional methods that were used for centuries. He explained the daily process from scratch and explained that the first most important task is to source good flour. He said that he has been very fortunate to find the Eden Valley Mill, a bio – dynamic mill which produce a stone ground flour. He said the bread would not be what it is today, if he used bulk manufactured flour.
He explained how he spent a long time in Germany looking for the old fashioned mixers, that take one hour to knead the dough, rather than a mixer that you would find in a commercial bakery, where it would only take 5 - 15 minutes to knead. He chooses to use a small amount of yeast and then leaves his bread all day to prove, rather than requiring it to prove in a couple of hours.
When establishing his bakery 8 years ago, he chose to go against the conventional hours of running a bakery, which are so undesirable for staff, for example starting at 2am in the morning so that bread is coming hot out of the oven at 6am.
Instead he bakes his bread in the afternoon so that it comes hot out of the oven from 4pm and his staff are finished by 6 pm. He also introduced a culture of where his bakers are multi skilled in all area’s so that they have diversity in their job. He said that it is interracial to him that his staff enjoy their work and this has proven to be successful for him, as he has had a baker with him for 6 years.
It’s not hard to imagine why a baker such as Gothard, has produce that thrives in today’s society….even when the ‘normal’ is the bigger producer.
Written by: Sioban Baldini
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