The Community Supported Bakery a year on

It’s been just over a year since I began baking purely for subscribers here in the Newcastle region of NSW. Before that, I focused on local markets as my retail, but after six years of doing this, I found that in our region market operators have become very risk averse. They increasingly would cancel the market at the first hint of rain or wind. Not great for the local baker who has a day to sell their bread.

It’s my second attempt at creating a Community Supported Bakery - my first was a few years back when we set up the bakery out the back of Wesley Mission in Newcastle West. We were delivering bread every Saturday all over Newcastle, and while it worked quite well, the retail business and Cafe we built on the Wesley site took over.

I learned from our experience in supplying people directly that the subscription baking model needed a few tweaks for it to work long term. This time around, after building the model around Pick Up Points (PUPs) rather than home delivery, I believe we’ve got it close to right. I’ve approached a number of strategically located businesses, whether they are retailers or cafe operators, and offered them the opportunity to become part of our Community Supported Bakery network as Pick Up Points for our subscribers. This provides the subscriber, the PUP and the bakery with positive benefits. The bakery gets a retail location for bread. The subscriber gets a convenient place to pick up their bread, and the PUP gets added foot traffic to their shop or cafe.

The baby oven I used to bake my way across Oz became the CSB’s first baking tool.

When I began baking for subscribers again a bit over a year ago, I was using the Bush Bakery MkII for the task of baking maybe a dozen loaves every Friday night here at the farm. My proper bakery, here in the old dairy shed, wasn’t built, so I was living in my caravan, trying to keep things afloat. The Bush Bakery MkII would have to do while I was waiting. It was less than perfect, and the bread I was baking from it was also less than perfect. But I pushed on anyway. Thankfully, my customers were patient.

I was hankering to bake great bread again in Luna, my main flame. She was still in pieces out the back shed as Craig Miller was refurbishing her in his spare time. I had to play the long game if I wanted to have her baking again.

Not easy for me. I always want things finished asap so I can get on with other stuff. Everything seemed to be in permanent slomo. I was going crazy. My weekly bake in my little baking trailer kept me sane.

The dough box takes shape.

At first, I was doing the whole thing completely by hand, using my ‘dough box’, which I’d recently completed, making it out of used plywood transit boards. Transit boards are what we call the plywood boards used to rest finished and shaped dough on before baking. I had plenty which were old and needed to be replaced, so I cut them up and created my dough box from them.

I had just returned from my trip across the country in the above mentioned trailer bakery, and I’d been using standard dough tubs to mix my dough by hand for the trip. The idea was to make the dough box before I left, but I ran out of time. As soon as I got back, I set to work on it, and it was finally finished. I made it waterproof and super smooth, and began making dough in it. I found that it worked pretty well for 10kg of dough - in fact, it was surprisingly efficient.

The Community Supported Bakery (CSB)

A Community Supported Bakery can take many different forms. In some places, bakeries are set up to meet community demands - and thus are entirely funded by these communities. Bakery entrepreneurs have used crowd funding to get their dreams up and running for many years. I remember meeting a baker from Berlin who had done this some 20 years ago, simply by putting handbills on the walls of cafes to gather support from the community. In other places, customers and staff are members of a cooperative. I attempted this idea a decade ago in Newcastle and failed miserably. I have seen it working though, and while the environment for a cooperatively run bakery might not be here in Australia (with a raft of incorporation laws which make forming a coop very expensive to do, and then also expensive to run when it’s finally set up) , the idea has a lot of merit and could work in places where there aren’t such onerous laws. I’d be very interested to hear from anyone who HAS managed to get a cooperatively run bakery up and going here in Australia though!

There are lots of other ways for a bakery to be supported by the community. Turns out, communities like to have bakeries which are run by people rather than corporations.

There are CSBs which simply have a membership system, with members helping to finance the bakery’s operations each year by their membership fees. In return, members get first dibs at the bakery product, often for a discounted price. Other CSBs go for a share system, where the investors receive a dividend when the bakery becomes profitable. Still others tag on the back of established buying groups, enabling them to bake directly for buying group customers.

This incarnation of my CSB is supported by a subscription system. It’s a way of supplying customers over the long term with affordable, nutritious bread. Users of the system get discount bread by committing to a number of loaves which they can have delivered, one at a time if they like, over an endless time frame. The more loaves they commit to, the better the price per loaf. Bulk buying without the bulk, if you like.

It’s like a phone card - they just top up their credit when they need to, and receive supply whenever they want. Better prices are also available when a customer orders a number of loaves at the same time. This means that a reseller can be part of the system too. Bread can then be purchased by anyone at a standard retail price without actually having to subscribe by simply popping in to one of the resellers and buying it over the counter.

The subscription system can be tweaked to be time based, which encourages regular use. Ours isn’t done that way here, because in Newcastle, at least, people want maximum flexibility. It’s a tough market! Nonetheless, our subscriber base has steadily grown over the year, and we seem to be holding on to our customers.

Our CSB so far

So a dozen loaves, paid for in advance by members of the community, was the start of it. Now we are baking about 85 loaves each time I fire up Luna the oven. We have an ‘apprentice’ who is learning the trade from the ground up, and students regularly attend our bake day workshops so they can learn how it all fits together.

Over the coming couple of months, we’ll produce a hundred loaves per bake. At that time, I’ll consider firing Luna up a second day each week - once I’ve found someone who can distribute them more widely. Eventually she’ll get fired up more days, one day at a time. The whole idea is resource management - so when the oven’s five or six tonnes of thermal mass gets fully soaked with heat, she becomes much more efficient. I just have to find homes for all the bread!

Do you know someone who would like to distribute the bread more widely, so that we can fire up Luna more often? Leave a comment after the article and I’ll be in touch!

In the meantime, our bakery is settled into a steady rhythm. We have students visiting throughout the week to learn or revise what they have learnt. Tuesdays we make sponges for dough. Wednesdays we make the dough. Thursdays we de-gas the dough we’ve made for the first time, and prepare firewood for the bake. It’s a 72 hour process from start to finish, and it makes the bread really digestible and full flavoured.

Here on the farm there is a pretty good supply of wood, but there’s always the process of trimming the wood we have to fit Luna’s firebox. This happens on Thursdays. It’s also a good day for weeding our small garden, produce from which eventually becomes jars of pickles and pastes for our family, friends and subscribers. It’s also the day I do oven maintenance - Luna gets a deck and firebox clean, as well as a blow out to clear her flue system of all soot.

Friday is bake day, and we start by cutting and shaping all our dough, ready for the final proof. Luna is fired up in the morning, and we keep her going until baking time begins in the late afternoon and early evening. By this time Luna is steady at about 220C. When we have good fuel, it’s a matter of holding her down to temp; when it’s not good, it’s a matter of cranking the firebox along until the decks get hot enough to bake. Baking currently takes between 2 and 4 hours. Then we let the bread cool on racks, and pack it for delivery Saturday morning.

Saturday is delivery day, and I head off to our 5 Pick Up Points to deliver the bread early in the morning. Deliveries are all done by 10am. Then we rest, ready to do it again next week!

One or two Sundays each month are dedicated to teaching the general public, with 101 and 102 Workshops held. It gives people a chance to learn about proper bread as well as to have a look at what we do here.

It’s a comfortable rhythm to live with, and allows time for things like gardening, administration of our subscriber system (which takes a good few hours each week), essential maintenance of the bakery and oven, and development of the site here at the old dairy shed.

Once we start baking twice a week I can see the time becoming tighter, but there is still quite a bit of capacity time wise; the routine here somehow allows for extra stuff without too much stress.

If you would like to see how things work in our Community Supported Bakery, why not book in and learn about the process for yourself or for your group? You can bring along as many as 6 people for the one price.

The reinvention of the Bush Bakery

The workshop

Nothing excites me more than a new project. I've been holed up here about 15 minutes out of Dungog, at my mate Craig Miller's Mum's farm; I've set up my work space in the old dairy shed. My base resource is what used to be my markets shop trailer. 

Your Challenge, should you choose to accept it...

For this project, I've set myself some really tricky challenges - not the least of which is to build the Bush Bakery Mk II almost entirely from existing materials - a kind of re purposing/recycling process. Essentially, I'm stripping out the inside of what was the shop trailer, and then turning it into a mobile baking classroom-cum-sleeping quarters for the Tour Down South.

I gotta say, I'm learning so much about recycling building materials, and how to work in this manner. It's about the third or fourth carpentry project I've done this way, and I feel as though I'm finally getting the hang of it. I've been working on it day and night for the past week in order to test it out before hitting the road properly in June. So far, I have spent a grand total of $100 on the refit; everything that came out of the old shop trailer has been broken down and reused in the new classroom trailer. My carefully laid out pile of timber, hardware, assorted building materials and baking equipment which came from both this trailer and my old classroom at Ellalong has been utilised well. Indeed, towards the deadline (Friday for Saturday's workshop) I was actually starting to run out of materials. Luckily, I managed to improvise well enough to get the new trailer ready for a trial run.

I took the newly repurposed Bush Bakery Mk II out yesterday for the first time to conduct an outdoor 101 class yesterday. I have been in a state of high anxienty all week, as I've been working on the trailer. There is nothing worse than equipment failure in the middle of a workshop, and so many things can go wrong when you are making bread from scratch with very little actual bakery equipment. Thankfully, everything worked quite well, and my students seemed pretty happy with the bread we baked, as well as the day in general. This feedback nourishes me and allows me to keep going on the project, knowing I'm on the right track.

One of the highlights of the day was just how good the oven I'm using works. This oven was made in 1924 in Massachusetts, USA. It weighs virtually nothing - maybe 5kg - and it can bake a few loaves at once. It was the inspiration for the Bush Oven which Craig and I are currently designing for the Tour, and yesterday was the first time I have actually used this beautiful antique oven. Wow! What a clever little thing it is. I've been reflecting once again on how we think we are currently really technologically savvy, and yet back in 1924 they made a super efficient oven which can do a lot of baking from not much at all. We fired the oven up with lightweight firewood, and managed to bake a baker's dozen worth of loaves in a just a few hours. The oven spring we were getting was nothing short of amazing. Crust colour wasn't great, but the crust itself was brilliant. Leathery, crisp and thin. Colour can be addressed in other ways - but black ovens like this one are notoriously difficult to put steam into. Nonetheless, Craig and I are now working with this idea for our new Bush Oven. Stay tuned for progress here.

The trailer currently is barely functional. I got the basics done for the workbench, but I had to improvise a way to hold wooden transit boards for final proofing which was barely adequate. The idea I am working towards is a kind of third world retarder/proofer, based around the same technology utilised in the Coolgardie Safes of last century - essentially coolers which worked by evaporating water. My version will have walls made of expanded clay pellets, which were used in an aquaculture setup here on the farm, and which will be wrapped in wire mesh. These pellets hold a lot of water, and the way I'm going to build it will allow air to pass around the pellets, causing evaporation as well as turbulation. Airflow will be provided by vents which are on the front of the trailer, so when I'm moving the Coolgardie will cool things down. When I'm stationary, the cooler can convert to a proofer by wrapping it up in calico and placing a water bath warmed by hot coals from the oven. If I build it right, it will seal well, and in theory will satisfy my hard core off grid requirements.

Plumbing for the Bush Bakery will be very simple. There will be hot and cold water, as you would expect; I've salvaged a stainless steel water tank from the Bush Bakery Mk I, and this will sit on the roof and be heated by the sun. I've used this incredibly basic technology before, and it heats water well, even on cool days. The tank will connect with a tap inside the trailer, and will also provide the water for the Coolgardie unit via a trickle feed system. This will have a valve fitted to regulate the water flow so that the cooler will have the right amount of water for evaporation. Cold water will simply come from a hose connection. Weight is an issue with this small trailer, so I won't be carrying much water when on the road.

I've written about the mixing tools here already - I'll be making a Baker's trough for this purpose. More about this when I've made it. Again, I'll be playing around with my version with a view to optimise it for weight, volume and mechanical advantage. By the time it's ready, I'll have most of the rest of the trailer's infrastructure complete, so there will be some trials to do before I roll on down the road with the Bush Bakery Mk II.

For the sleeping quarters, I'm going to have a simple fold out bed on the opposite side of the trailer to the kitchen. I've insulated the roof, and will be insulating the wings which fold out to provide shelter. I'm still deciding how to create walls and windows for my fold out bed - I'm tossing up between some sort of canvas/shade cloth roll down wall system, or something a bit more sophisticated made of wood. It will be the middle of winter, so it is going to have to be able to keep me and my dog Pippa warm and dry every night. Pippa's bedroom will be on the ground under the fold down bed. I'll be adding a mesh section under it to keep her contained while the moon is out.

I've got six weeks to finish and test my Bush Bakery Mk II. As usual, I am confident I will have it all good to go by then - but anyone who saw me a few nights ago before Saturday's workshop would know, sometimes I tend to be a bit more ambitious with my projects and the deadlines I set for them than is humanly possible. That's just the way it is. I can only plug away, and hope that I get a good run with things. Sometimes jobs like this can go smoothly and without too many hitches. Other times, stuff just eats up time, and progress is slow. This is a real risk with a project of this type - particularly when one is working with 'inventions' which one hasn't ever done before. There are many unknowns. In addition, my choice of re using and recycling as much as possible means I have to make do largely with what I've got. This is not simply an idealogical position - here at Wallarobba, it's a forty five minute drive to the nearest large hardware store, so you really can't just nip down and grab things on the spur of the moment. Buying hardware in this case involves planning, lists, and a flexible brain. Luckily, when we dismantled the Bush Bakery Mk I, materials were sorted and carefully dismantled because I knew they would be used again. Thus, my supplies are already waiting for me to use them - though I have no idea what things I will actually need as yet!

I do love a challenge. Keep an eye out for future posts right here to see how it's all going. If you would like to book for a Bush Baking Workshop, and see and use the new setup, you can book for any of the workshops here. Keep an eye out for new venues via our facebook page as well. I'm coming your way soon!

The Bush Bakery Tour Down South

Tour Down South

Since my last post alluding to the upcoming trip through the southern states, I've had some great feedback, so I've been fleshing out details of how it's all going to work. So far, the dates and locations and confirmed venues, as well as links for booking, are as follows: (These are being updated each week, so if a venue is not yet confirmed, you will find out about it here. If there is a web page done, the workshop will be going ahead anyway, and people who book will receive an email with details.)

Weekend 2/3 June: Nowra/Berry NSW. Workshop to be held at Berry B&B on Saturday night and Sun morning. This one is now sold out. Keep an eye out for next year!

Weekend 9/10 June Braidwood area NSW. Workshop confirmed to be held at Murrumbateman, on one of our student's farms. Still a couple of spots available, but it's very close to being sold out, so get in quick!

Sunday 17 June: Harcourt/ Bendigo area VIC. One workshop confirmed at the historic and soon to re open Blumes Bakery, Harcourt. Still a few spots available, but word is out and it's filling fast.

Weekend 23/24 June: Melbourne area. Workshop to be held at Knoxfield, about 20 minutes out of the CBD in a really easy to access location. Still some places available, but bookings are coming in from groups so if you want to attend I recommend you get in soon.

Weekend 30/1 June/July: Adelaide. We are running our workshop from Brahma Lodge, in northern Adelaide - about 25 minutes from the city. Still some places available so book now.

Weekend 21/22 July: Wheat Belt, WA. Workshop confirmed for Pingelly on a fellow baker, Ed, The Breadwright's micro bakery. Camp sites available, so come on and make the trip!  

Weekend 28/29/30th July.  Esperance, WA. Two workshops and a demonstration bake confirmed. The first, by invitation only at my fellow baker and keen student's micro bakery, Tiff from Bread Local, and the second workshop at Yirri Grove Olive plantation. There are still places available for the Yirri Grove workshop, but it is almost sold out. Don't miss this one!

Weekend 11/12 August: Mildura area VIC. Workshop at Red Cliffs, just outside Mildura, on the 11th. 

Weekend 25/26 August: Bathurst area NSW. Choosing between a couple of venues. Link will be up soon.

Follow the links on the area near you to our shop, which will enable you to book in directly. If I'm in your area and you know of an event that is being held locally where we can run a demo bake or Community Bake In, please feel free to get in touch! 

The Bush Baking Workshop involves making bread the way it has been made for centuries - using two hands and some very simple tools to make the dough, which will be stored and proofed without electric heating or refrigeration. It's sourdough, unplugged; real bread for real people.

The Bush Bakery; Mark II

The story of the Bush Bakery has been told here, and in a vimeo story, and on the pages of various articles on the web. I won't repeat it here today. We are moving forward! 

This tour is what happens when you take what I named the Gypsy Bakery Trailer back on the road. Of course, those following the story would know that the original Gypsy Bakery Trailer ended up being far too heavy to tow around on a regular basis. It was parked at our premises at Ellalong, where it grew a 'lean to' off the side. This became my classroom, and soon after this grew again to become my Bush Bakery, Mk I. 

The Bush Bakery Mk II is being built as we speak. It comes from a hybridisation of the Gypsy trailer and the mobile shop you might have seen in the Vimeo link earlier.

The original Gypsy Bakery Trailer will be moved back to its birthplace of Wallarobba very soon, where it will undergo a big recycling process. As a prototype, the trailer was useful, and it has paid for itself. However, it also damn near wore me out every time I baked in it.

Craig and I have figured out how to recycle it into a completely new production unit, which indeed will be truly portable. It will also be easier to work. The working title for this project is The Bush Bakery Mk III. But more on that later. Let's roll back to the present - the Bush Bakery Mk II.

Reverse Technology in action

Those of you who have been following my stories for a while would know that I'm heavily into 'third world simple' technology. This phrase was coined when Craig Miller, my oven design partner and I were creating the first of our prototype woodfired baker's ovens, affectionately known collectively as 'the Berthas'. Anyone armed with a spanner, a crowbar and a basic set of tools could repair these ovens. The principle also meant that we were constantly trying to simplify, to remove stuff that wasn't necessary. Our ovens are designed not to break, in essence. Easy to say, of course, but hard to do. We are still diligently working at it, eight years later.

Extending that principle, I've arrived at what I'm calling 'Reverse Technology'. When you come to a Bush Baking workshop while I'm on the road, you will be seeing a lot of applied technologies from the past which are 'fit for purpose' today. My Bush Trailer will demonstrate some new twists on some of these technologies, as they can be applied to my slow fermentation sourdough baking techniques. Kind of a win/win, yes? 

The new trailer, which will have a working title of 'The Bush Bakery Mk II', will be truly 'off grid'. It needs no mains power, but I want to go further than that; there will be no gas either. It will need to plug in to water, and that's about it; I'll mention in my defence that carrying large volumes of water isn't possible on a small trailer.

The idea is it will be robust, super simple, adaptible and useful for life on the road. Some examples of these Reverse Technologies you are likely to see and use in the trailer are as follows:

The Baker's Trough

Making dough in bulk by hand

When I started out, I couldn't afford to buy a mixer, so I developed a kneading technique which enabled me to make good quality dough in 30 kg batches completely by hand. I utilised this technique again many years later in our Hunter Street co-op style bakery, and was able to quite easily make up to 180 kg of dough each day. It was slow work, but very easy once you got into the swing of it.

Recently, I discovered the Baker's Trough, which has been a revelation. This simple trough amplifies the baker's mechanical effort (two human arms) many times, thereby being able to create dough very efficiently by hand. Such a deceptively simple tool, and yet this is how bakers around the world made dough right up till the mid 20th Century. Gradually, electricity became more widely available and mixers began to be installed in most bakeries in the western world. I do remember seeing a bakery when I was a kid which still had a series of stone baker's troughs in use, alongside a huge two arm mixer. These troughs looked a lot like those old cement laundry sinks most houses had before the washing machine became a household appliance. Now I'm showing my age; my grandma had a pair of them, and they are remarkably similar to those used by the bakery I mentioned here. 

I'm in the process of building my own baker's trough from timber. It will form the backbone of my traveling doughmaking equipment. I'm currently experimenting with designs, but I'm attracted to using a tree trunk hollowed out with a small chainsaw, and then being carved, chiselled and sanded smooth. 

Note: At the beginning of the tour, the baker's trough is still unfinished. I plan on making time to build it somewhere along the way when the opportunity presents itself. Stay tuned!

The Bush Baker'sOven

The Bush Baker's Oven

The dough will be baked in a very basic woodfired oven which will be set up at each site. The oven should be able to bake about 16 loaves at a time, can be lifted by one person, and can be powered using a variety of fuels, including charcoal, sticks and twigs, briquettes or even biochar.

It's a revolutionary take on an old, old design I came across at a market stall a few years back. As usual, mine will be a prototype, and we will see what happens. Watch this blog for details as I write them.

Naked Refrigeration and Proofing

While there are perfectly workable off grid fridges available which are powered by gas, these didn't qualify as 'reverse technology'. Indeed, they have an ongoing dependency on gas, which in turn generates a dependency on exploration and mining and so on.

Solar fridges exist, and could become commonplace, but for this trip, I have been aiming for super simple and cheap - 'third world simple' has been my catch phrase, and so solar systems were just too elaborate and expensive for what I need. 

I have been looking into things which utilise evaporative cooling - things like 'Zeer pots' and 'Coolgardie safes'. Evaporation requires heat and/or airflow, both of which are available in abundance when you are outdoors in Australia. At Ellalong, I used ice filled PVC tubes and small fans to cool an insulated space. Eventually, I found that simply placing a bunch of large ice filled bottles in the coolroom space and blowing air at them cooled things by about 10 to 15 degrees below the ambient temperature. This was enough for my needs, most of the time - but on this trip, I wanted to go further with less.

Low Tech Cooler/Proofer

I liked the idea of using clay to keep things cold, but the problem with my trailer is weight and movement. Clay is relatively fragile, and to work well as a fridge, it needs a bit of weight.

I've arrived at the Coolgardie principle as a very good solution for mobile cooling. The evaporative power generated by slowly wetting hessian or calico or old towel is what cools a Coolgardie safe. You can bring the temperature of the 'safe' 10 to 15 degrees below the external temperature in the right conditions. 

So far. my version utilises two screens, filled with clay pellets from an old aquaponics setup, wrapped up with hessian and shade cloth. It is moistened by a drip feed hose, and evaporation is provided by a battery powered fan, as well as ambient ventilation while the trailer is moving. Early testing is providing reasonable cooling; it's still a work in progress, lets say. We are not there yet!

I'm also using candle power and terracotta pots to warm the same unit when I need to proof dough. So I have a super low tech version of what is known in bakery circles as a 'retarder / proofer'. I've used it a few times now, and I'm learning some tricks. I think eventually I will move to either a spirit burner type to get things really hot. 

So why not connect with me on the way?

For me, the trip will be something very special; I will finally get to meet many of you who I've spent much time with either on the phone or via email. I'll get to meet people who read what I write as well. It's a bit strange being a writer - lots of you know of me through my stories, yet I don't know you at all. It will be nice to actually meet you!

I will also be able to see some of the places in the Australian bush I've always wanted to see.

I'm totally fascinated by how Australian bakers managed to create the daily bread a hundred years ago, when there was no refrigeration, no electricity, very few vehicles, and often very little pure flour! On this trip, I want to drop in to a few bakeries still using Scotch ovens, and talk shop with bakers, learning as we do from each other. 

It's going to be a very full and hopefully rewarding trip. When I first wrote this post, there were 72 sleeps till I hit the road. At the time of this edit, there are only about 5 sleeps to go! Much is finished, but there is still so much to do!

The Bush Bakery Mk II