Michael Ruderman from Melbourne’s 2 Castles Bakery has officially become Australia’s first certified Bread Sommelier.

The move came after Michael realised there was still a gap in his knowledge – not in the making of it, but rather in the tasting and communicating of it. So, in order to address this gap he enrolled in the Certified Bread Sommelier course offered by the German National Bakers Academy in Weinheim, Germany.

“A baker can shape a loaf with total mastery and still struggle to put into words why one crumb structure delights the palate while another falls flat,” Michael said.

“So I enrolled in the Certified Bread Sommelier course, curious to see bread through yet another lens: not as a chemist or a craftsman this time, but as a taster.”

Michael said the course was a one-year, internationally recognised program that combines three in-person modules in Weinheim with online modules taking place in between.

Throughout the year they studied bread culture, bread science and nutrition, production and marketing, in addition to dedicating time to practicing sensory skills and pairing bread with food and drinks. Then, Michael said, they completed a research project on bread.

“It all culminated in a 10-day examination marathon: four written exams, bread description and sensory tests, an oral technical examination by a panel of experts, a project presentation, and an impromptu presentation on a randomly drawn selection of breads,” he said.

Michael said in addition to the accreditation, the Certified Bread Sommelier course had sharpened something in him that he hadn’t expected.

“…a vocabulary for aroma, acidity, mouthfeel and aftertaste that let me describe our own breads with far more precision that ‘it tastes good’,” he said.

“It also reshaped how we talk to customers at 2 Castles Bakery, guiding them through a tasting, pointing out the toasted nut notes in a rye, the gentle lactic tang in our sourdough, the clean, faintly sweet profile of our gluten-free loaf. Bread, it turns out, has its own language. I just needed to learn to speak it.”

So how do you even begin to prepare for a course of this kind? Michael said, for him, it meant months of deliberate tasting – not just eating.

“I tasted our own breads and other bakeries’ loaves side by side, wrote notes on crust, crumb, aroma and aftertaste, and tried pairing them with contemporary Australian and international food,” he said.

“I practiced applying the Weinheim Bread Language, the program’s shared sensory vocabulary, to what I perceived. I also revised grain science and drew on years of baking. My Masters of Food Science from the University of Melbourne proved the real advantage, helping me understand why a loaf tastes the way it does.”

For others considering making the journey to Germany, Michael said the Certified Bread Sommelier program is for people who are passionate about bread, who want to deepen their knowledge of bread science and help shape the future of bread culture.

“It’s demanding in both time and cost, but it offers international recognition of your expertise and a new level of authority,” he said.

I loved every minute of it. How often do you get to spend your days thinking about bread?”