With the ovens and the people who work them visible from the shop’s entrance, there’s no need to peer behind the curtains of Bruns Bakery to reveal the work going on there. Sean Crilley tells Baking Business about the theatre kitchen that puts everything on show at Brunswick Heads.

“Gives you a bit more confidence, doesn’t it, when the food’s made fresh right there in front of you?” says Sean Crilley, part-owner of Bruns Bakery in the New South Wales north coast town of Brunswick Heads. Sean owns the bakery with his wife Jane Crilley, and husband-and-wife team Mel and Kurt Hogan.

Sean and Jane also own Suffolk Bakery in Suffolk Park near Byron Bay, and it was there that Kurt first worked for them as head baker.

“He worked for us for four years and then the opportunity arose over at Brunswick Heads. We purchased that business and did a full renovation,” says Sean. Sean and Jane now spend most of their time at Suffolk while Kurt and Mel hold the reins at Bruns.

The team bought Bruns Bakery in 2016, but the building has housed a bakery since the 1950s. Sean wanted to capture some of the building’s original condition in the renovation.

“We stripped it back so it’s showing all the original brickwork and the beautiful timber rafters, timber trusses, the old roof. It’s sort of a rustic, industrial look.”

Also on Sean’s renovation agenda was what he calls a theatre kitchen—a kitchen where bakers and pastry chefs can create their goods in full view of the customers. After having enjoyed the results of an open kitchen in the Suffolk Park bakery for the previous eight years, Sean was keen to replicate the experience in Bruns Bakery.

“The customers can come in, have their coffee or something to eat and watch the pastry chefs make their cakes and pastries in full view,” says Sean.

The bakery has one oven in the back room, where the pies are cooked, but the front kitchen contains two ovens and is where most of the action happens.

“Customers are interested in the ingredients,” says Sean.

“Our pastry chefs are always getting questions… ‘What’s in there? How long do you bake that for? What temperature?’ Questions like that. So you’re always talking about the product.”

Cooking in full view creates a communal space where people gather to eat and chat.

“It’s not only the theatre of watching them bake,” says Sean, “but also the sounds of the oven. The beep beep as the doors are opening, the smell of the product coming out of the ovens… As bakers sometimes we take for granted what we’re doing each day but customers love to see that. They all sit around, especially the kids—they sit right up the front and watch what’s going on. We often hand out little pieces of the cakes so the customers can taste it—the kids love that.”

Brunswick Heads is a coastal town settled on the mouth of the Brunswick River. It has three caravan parks, an array of hotel, motel and B&Bs and attracts tourists with its unspoilt waterways and surf beaches.

“It’s a beautiful little village,” says Sean. “It’s an old fishing village and lots of holiday-makers come here for the beautiful river with kids jumping off the bridge and swimming.”

The river was the setting for Bruns Bakery’s birthday celebration last November. Townspeople floated down the Brunswick River on inflatable doughnuts to celebrate one year since Bruns Bakery opened under Sean, Jane, Mel and Kurt.

“Mel came up with the idea to promote the whole doughnut thing because we sell a lot of doughnuts in the store. We thought we might get a couple of hundred people participating, but it was a lot more than we expected.”

The Bruns’ team sold 500 floats that day, which raised money for the local surf club. The event included live music and fresh doughnuts courtesy of Bruns Bakery.

“It was a great sight seeing 500 pink doughnuts floating down the river. It was a good day for the community.

“We’re going to do that once a year and try to make it bigger and better each year.”

In the meantime, Kurt and the team at Bruns Bakery will continue to focus on creating fresh products such as pastries, pies (the team won Best Vegetarian Pie in the 2017 Australian Best Pie Competition) and cakes.

“We’ve been doing the unicorn cakes and drip cakes for a good 12 months. Mel introduced them and we put them on social media and all of a sudden it just took off. We get lots and lots of orders for them, especially on weekends.”

Other items in hot demand are the vegetarian and vegan options, which the team has been expanding to meet demand.

“At Suffolk,” explains Sean, “five years ago we wouldn’t have had one staff member that had a vegan diet but at the moment I think we’ve got five of our 35 staff members who are vegan. We’ve got a large selection of vegan products there as well and it’s just getting bigger and bigger each year. There’s a high demand for it.”

The bakery also makes a range of sourdoughs.

“I think there’s nine varieties at the moment,” says Sean.

“Tugliesse is probably our most famous bread—it’s an Italian sourdough and our customers love it.”

The bread is the only item customers don’t get to watch as it’s being created, since it’s baked at night.

“We like to bake in the day as much as we can. Not bread of course, we need that ready fresh for the morning, but we bake through the day so customers have confidence in what they’re seeing—that it is being made fresh.

“It’s important,” Sean reflects. “Very important.”