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

Times of change - the baker hits the road.

Taking Luna's Vital Signs as I prepare for a baking session at a 101 Workshop.

I've been working and teaching at the Bush Bakery for the past few years now. It's been an absolute revelation on so many levels. From thirty years of running numerous bakeries, lots of common issues emerge; big ones include energy usage, wastage, working civilised and family friendly hours, and the effects of long term baking on the body. Others have been how can one simplify the production of sourdough bread so that it is consistent; how to work with the seasons; how to create the most nutritious bread possible sustainably and ethically. There are more issues on this list as well, though the article will rapidly step beyond the subject of the title.

Anyway, I've had to assess them all, and re assess them, over time. The Bush Bakery, then, has been a test bed for the resolution of many aspects of being a baker, and about the practicalities of life in the baking trade. And I have to say it has been a total success as a means of coming to grips with many of these issues. As a bonus, I've also been able to bake some of the best bread I've ever made there, and have taught hundreds of you the basics of the baker's craft since being here.

Baking in the Elements

My past three bakery incarnations have involved semi outdoor baking; it seems to be a natural extension to the idea of working a wood fired oven. There are numerous benefits with this style of baking. The obvious one is avoiding baking the actual baker, which can occur by enclosing the baker in a box with a couple of tonnes of hot thermal mass standing right beside them. Every summer, bakers everywhere adapt to large volumes of sweat being emitted from their pores as they attempt to keep an oven filled with melting dough.  It's never pretty.

I've always considered a baker's summer as an opportunity to clear out the sweat glands and lose a bit of weight.  You sweat a lot, but you just embrace it. You learn to hydrate at levels only athletes can appreciate. Being close to the breeze really helps, though. The Bush Bakery has two open sides, and all I need is a decent fan to move the air around; thus, surviving in hot weather is achievable. 

On the other hand, winter here is delicious, with a couple of tonnes of hot brick on bake day to remove temperature fluctuations. It presents its own issues, of course; not the least of which is to attempt to get the bake done in a reasonable amount of time while the weather is cold. Things slow down in the baking world more and more as the mercury gradually disappears inside its little glass tube.

When you are semi outdoors, the cold is pretty influential. Granted, it doesn't get all that cold here in the lower Hunter Valley; though it's still cold enough for you to really know you are in the middle of winter. On a baking week, I work three days preparing dough, and I don't fire up the oven at all. My environment can be pretty harsh in the dead of winter, with the cold, the wind, and the work all being relatively relentless.  In addition, my techniques involve cooling down dough, so much of the time my extremities (fingers and hands) are being reduced to the temperature of the dough I am working, and it's usually somewhere below ten degrees C when it emerges from the fridge.

Baking strategies have to be devised which are almost diametrically opposed to those used in Summer.

(Having baked for about thirteen winters in the Blue Mountains,  the climate in the Lower Hunter Valley is a walk in the park by comparison. Up in those hills, it tends towards 'brass monkey weather' for the majority of every year; winter baking presents even more intense challenges.)

Overall, though, a cooler climate is better for slowly fermenting sourdough than a hot one. Bakers are nothing if not adaptive creatures, I hasten to add. Once you have survived half a dozen seasons in the same environment, you will learn how to cope with it, no matter what. Nonetheless, practitioners of my craft have always been acutely aware of the seasons; the elemental forces dictate the strategy the baker plans for each bake.  In this regard, bakers share a great deal with farmers, who are always learning to work with the elements.

A Zero Waste Approach

The Bush Bakery is about more than baking outdoors.  I've written on other forums about some of the other things I've been trying to come to grips with while I've been working here. Things like waste. The Bush Bakery is as close to a 'zero waste' bakery as I think it is possible to be. It is largely a closed loop system. On the input side, there are various forms of plastic packaging and so forth which are quite difficult to avoid in the first place, but pretty much every input and output have been thought about in the larger scheme of things. Everything has multiple uses on the way to its end point. I re-use semolina, for example, three times; first, it is sifted over and under the dough; then, overs are sifted and returned  to the container for next use, with any 'scarf', or moistened semolina sifted out and put in the ash bin. Finally, when the floor of the oven is swept clean after loading and emptying, the burnt semolina leftover is also put in the ash tin. This burnt semolina is used at the end of each firing cycle as fuel. It provides a quick burst of flame, and so is useful at various times of the bake when the firebox needs a kick along. 

Waste from re stocking days and workshops is sorted through into incenerables, recyclables and compost. My flour bags get used to establish the fire on bake days, as they are made of paper. I have also used them for various gardening applications as well. I've gradually refined the process of bringing unsold bread from my markets based retail operation into the production process as fuel. Thus, I have been able to refine my way of making 'organic coal', or biochar, using waste heat from the oven. This biochar is now an essential fuel to power the oven.

We discovered 'organic coal' by accident about seven years ago, with one of the first prototype woodfired ovens we made, Bertha. A tired baker would sometimes leave a loaf up the back of the oven without noticing. The following morning when the decks were swept clean for the day’s bake, a black, lightweight piece of coal was discovered. It was thrown in the firebox to dispose of. Wow! It burned like a bomb!

Organic coal has been fully incorporated into my baking practice now.

I also power the oven with sawmill offcuts, making the whole energy supply issue very easy and very cheap to resolve. By driving my oven entirely with waste, I estimate that my total baking setup costs a quarter of conventional commercial baking systems to operate, even when you take into account the extra time you need to devote to maintaining these energy sources. 

Flour dust gets up your nose (and later, everywhere else)

Long term bakers often tell me that flour dust is an issue for them. Some of them, when they combine it with other irritants like tobacco smoke and the like, end up with greatly reduced lung capacity, and even mild emphasema. Flour build up in the lungs is known as ‘white lung’. I didn’t think it was an issue for me. I haven't smoked in many, many years; but at Ellalong, with the bakery down the hill and the dough room up the hill, I was experiencing shortness of breath. I just put it down to my age, and that bloody big hill. By chance, I decided to move the dough room down to the Bush Bakery to make more space in the house. The Bush Bakery had open walls, lined with shade cloth. Suddenly, this shortness of breath decreased quite dramatically. I guess my lungs were filling up with flour from making dough in an enclosed space. In future bakeries, I intend to design a more sophisticated version of this indoor/ outdoor setup.

Change as a constant

Fundamentally, I think I love the elements. This 'hot and cold' thing is good for me. My soul isn't attuned to sameness, and I need change to keep it happy. The seasons provide this, particularly when one bakes outside. This constant change, I think, is also the reason I have continued to bake for the past thirty years.

Any one who knows me will attest to the fact that I am deeply attuned to total reinvention from time to time, and that I do it on a fairly regular basis.

For me to have been able to sustain myself as a baker for such a long period is testament to the fact that natural baking, in the elements, offers change, a kind of daily process of problem solving; in short, baking has a mental attraction that simply can't be replicated any other way that I know of.

Which brings me to the subject of the title.

I've been talking to people all around Australia over the past few years; plenty of you can't get to the Hunter Valley for a day or two, but you really want to learn sourdough in a hands on way. You know about what I do, and really just want to learn the basics of the craft, first hand, from someone who isn't full of hot air and limited experience.  Many of you have indicated that you are inspired not only by my methods, but also by my methodology; ways I am learning to remove waste from the baking business, simple and cheap ways to get 'off the grid' on every level; techniques to help people consider ALL the breadmaking inputs and outputs, and to make environmentally sensible decisions around each baking practice; and mostly just to bring baking proper bread back to the people.

It appears my ideology, my experiments, my successes and my failures over many years have all struck a chord; especially of late. The planets are aligning in all these endeavours. People want to investigate low tech solutions to all manner of enterprises. People want to build local networks and utilise what they have. They want to reduce food miles, make stuff from scratch at home, or to know the person who made it. They are fascinated by what can be done with 'third world' technologies, with collaboration, with an 'artisan' mindset.

People are needing to knead! The artisan baking community have been reinventing bread, one workshop, one loaf at a time, for many years now. I began my personal and professional journey almost three decades ago, and the recent embrace by 'the people' has been very encouraging.

Many of you have come to a 101 workshop and have ended up owning a bakery! (You know who you are, and I do wish all of you well!)

Hitting the road Punning

I have been encouraged by you to take the next step.  Most of you just want me to keep baking for you here in the Hunter Valley every week, and while it's been very difficult to 'peel' me away from the baking lifestyle, I gotta say the baker needs a ‘rest’ from ‘kneading’ to make his bread. He wants to make his dough while on the go.  While I know where my bread is buttered,  it's your bread I'm interested in. Specifically, how it's made, and where!

I want to come to your town and show off some tricks I've learned this last thirty years or so. I want to speak, to share my lifetime's passion directly with you. I want to come to where ever you are, and to show you the tricks of the trade, first hand. And I want to hear all about your place, your town, your region while I'm there. I definitely want to meet you. 

I've been looking into ways of baking that are so simple, so basic, that absolutely no electricity is required.  I'm creating a mobile, totally off the grid baking classroom, which can be brought to your town, your suburb, your area, your market, and which can practically demonstrate the baker's craft with minimal fuss. 

I can do demonstration workshops at your event.  I can run half day, semi 'hands on'  workshops where people get to bake some bread to take home. I can also run full day and multi day baking workshops where you get to make the dough completely from scratch and then bake it. With the trailer I'll be bringing, I can do this pretty much anywhere. I’m going to build a mobile, Bush Bakery MkII. It will be for teaching how to bake.

So, these workshops will be focused on Bush Baking, using techniques not dissimilar to Australia's original bakers. Minimal, low tech refrigeration, no electricity, no running water. Just beautiful, hand made woodfired sourdough bread. Baked in the elements, come what may. It's seat of the pants baking at it's finest, and I want you to come and be part of it, wherever you may be. There will be triumphs and there most certainly will be failures. But no matter, I guarantee you and I will both learn lot every time, and that neither of us will ever forget it!

The route so far:

I'm heading South from the Lower Hunter Valley of NSW in June this year. The plan is to head (initially) along the coast, with possible stops in Sydney, Wollongong, and Berry; then inland to Canberra, and the Bendigo area; then on to Melbourne, Adelaide, maybe a stop around Ceduna, then across the Nullabor to Esperance, Albany, Margaret River, Perth,  Kalgoorlie; and than back again with some diversions along the way. The idea is to run Bush Baking workshops for small, medium and large groups of people wherever I can. I want to tag into events which may suit this teaching format, and I want to use local knowledge along the way to really connect with each region. Things like local shows, field days and markets. If the idea works, I'll do a similar one next year, only this next time I'll head north. It's a big country! 

It would be great to hear from people in some of these places between now and then. If you would like me to teach your group, or in your town, or at your event, I'll be on the road from June to  September this year. There is still quite a bit of flexibility in the time and exact route of my journey, so if you reckon I really should hook into something you have planned, then talk to me! I'm all ears! In coming weeks I will be busily tieing down dates and locations, so  watch this space for developments. If you would like to discuss things with me my number is 0409 480 750. Please feel free to call.