Dust appreciation

During a time of extreme poverty in the Second World War, my Nonno would collect the family’s bread using bread tokens in a town called Sinopoli, in Reggio Calabria, Southern Italy.

He would be given the bread tokens and would go to one of the communal pick-up points and collect the bread and other staples as food was rationed. This was a time of extreme hardship and hunger was a very common thing, so once he collected the breads he would carefully inspect them. Occasionally he would collect breads that had touched during baking leaving a little window. He would then carefully pick away at the sides of the breads and try to appease his hunger, but cover up his tracks by making the loaf look in its natural state. One morning, he took a little too much off the loaf and it was obvious he had eaten the bread. When he got home, his mother, my great grandmother, was none too pleased and gave him a good old-fashioned Southern Italian hiding. She said to him taking that bread was wrong because someone else in the family would now eat less and as a mother trying to feed a family in times of poverty and hardship, you could see her perspective.

Nonno was so distraught and frustrated that he went out to the street screaming and was so frustrated with the entire situation and made a vow to never run out of bread again. He quickly went about learning the trade and made his way to Australia as a migrant. Once he was here, he quickly began work in bakeries and started a bread run where he would deliver bread to locals. Eventually he opened a bakery that my father, brothers and I eventually ran. That vow is why my life has been so greatly impacted by bread and this beautiful industry.

Bread is something so special and in my Italo/Australian upbringing was always a point of confusion. For us, a big hearty loaf of bread was always put on the table at dinnertime and we would break bits of it off and eat with a fork in one hand and a piece of bread in the other. Then I would go to school and see people bring white sliced bread sandwiches with the crusts cut off – it was the absolute polar opposite. I mean, the crust on a white sliced bread was so soft anyway, why would you cut it off? It was nothing like our crunchy Taormina (Italian vienna) breads we would make and, at least in our family, we would fight for the crusts on the end pieces.

This dynamic I believe still remains today, the continual spread of a highly refined, mass-produced white bread, and the continual renaissance of naturally leavened breads. Our family business, which started 1976, saw this transformation. My father’s first bakery was in Tramway Lane, Mascot, and he couldn’t bake enough hearty crunchy Italian loaves of bread, yet by the time I had taken over the business, the market had changed so much that our original breads represented only a fraction of our overall production.

So after a lifetime in bread, I had fallen out of love with it. It was time to move on, and we chose to sell our business. But during that time, we built a wood oven in my father’s backyard and would regularly bake breads and pizzas there. It was there I fell back in love with bread and what I believe is its truest and purest form. It was there I started to play around with stoneground flours. The love and passion returned.

Since opening Dust appreciation, we have been truly overwhelmed by the amazing response we have received from everyone. From day one we have been inundated with a warm reception and we have been well received. As we work through the lines of our patient clients, more often than not, a discussion would start up about our onsite stone mill and how our processes are different, so our staff would start explaining how we freshly mill our Bok flour onsite and then explain the different types of grains in each of our breads. We have a little demonstration where we have grain, regular white flour and our house-milled flour on a plate that clearly shows the differences in the flours. Clients would see this and run their fingers through it and see and feel the difference. As the clients understood this, they would then ask more questions, and this would result in a full-on conversation. This was great, however, the line would just get longer and longer, so I would be constantly be thinking of better ways to communicate our differences. Then one day it came to me – I needed to run a very basic class away from the pressure of the shopfront to properly explain the differences and why we do what we do. Thus, the Dust Appreciation class was born!

As I thought about how to present, I tried to cover the key moments and events not only in my life personally, but also bring to attention key moments in time that greatly influenced bread making that we have today. I thought the best way to do this was away from the hustle and bustle of a busy shop, but rather on a quieter night and on a table with other like-minded people, with great food and wine. After a brief video presentation, I share my own brief history of grain, flour and bread and then do a quick demonstration of our beautiful Osteroller Stone Mill and freshly mill flour, before we all go back together and share a meal and a moment in time together.

Since that very first fermentation of grain all those thousands of years ago, baking has continually evolved. I truly believe we now live in the most exciting time where we can all look at our history and to our future, and together make better choices to create and shape a better baking future.