Last year was a huge year for Rick and Graham Martin. The father-and-son duo behind the Queensland-based Rick’s on 6th successfully snagged the title of world’s best flatbread at the IBIE Bread Awards.
Baking Business caught up with Graham to hear about the journey.
Can you tell us about yourself?
Rick’s on 6th opened December 28, 2022 after having a 12 month break from our previous business call Rick’s Artisan Pies. The business is a Graham and Rick development (father and son) located in a lovely little coastal community at Cotton Tree on the Sunshine Coast.
I have spent many years overseas, having worked in China for 10 years in the baking industry that has been developing there at a rate of knot. It is now starting to leave everyone behind. It was actually in China where I learnt about Tangzhong – a Japanese method of making softer bread through the use of this product.
It’s flour and water that’s heated to plus 60c then cooled and added to the dough at 5% to 20% of flour weight. It does make the products softer and more flexible.
This is one of the items we use in our award-winning flat breads. The judges mentioned the great flexibility of the flat bread, which is from the addition of the tangzhong to the recipe.
The award-winning flat bread
You claimed the title of World’s Best Flat Bread at the IBIE World Bread Awards. Can you tell us about this experience?
Winning the World’s Best Flat Bread title was such a shock considering the other entrants in the competition and countries that entered.
What goes into creating a world’s best product?
It does come down to using quality local ingredients. The formula is a rich one with the addition of yoghurt and oil.
Our store today is the end result of a lot of travel to Italy, France, India along with USA and Asia meeting people from the industry and learning along the way. It’s allowed us to cherry pick the best of what we have seen and develop those products here at home for our local community.
How did Rick’s on 6th come to be?
This is a long way from the humble beginnings where I did my pastrycook apprenticeship with Guest Cakes in Wollongong, then working with Arnotts in product development before moving into a flour sales role. Then I bought a bakery in Warrawong and started the first manufacture of Ciabatta in Australia, selling par-baked products to the food service industry, Coles and Woolworths.
Tip Top purchased that business and I moved into the corporate world joining George Weston Foods, where during my tenure I managed Speedibake for a number of years and moved into Westons biscuit and Cake division as the CEO.
After a number of years with that business I moved to the Sunshine Coast and into a small bakery with my family, and Rick began his apprenticeship and his entry into the baking world, Dough Fusion.
Graham at the IBIE Bread Awards
It was while here that I made a return to the cake business with Top Taste to help the business after the scandalous needle in fruit cake incident. While Rick was completing his apprenticeship, I went to China with Associated British Foods. That ended up being for 10 years in the baking industry managing a Fats and Oils plant in Shanghai and a Burger bun plant in Wuhan.
It was after leaving China that we sold Dough Fusion and, to be honest, it was time to reinvent ourselves as the traditional bakery market was dying. That’s when we opened the Rick’s Artisan Pies Business that was a new type of bakery with no block bread and very few old style products. It was all sourdough and artisan style.
We sold this bakery at the end of Covid to take a break and, after a year, we found the new long-term home for ourselves at Cotton Tree and purchased the space and redeveloped into Rick’s on 6th.
The business continues to grow and the only yesteryear-type products we have today are a vanilla slice and a cream lamington. Everything else is on a changing rotation of Russian Honey Cake and an ever evolving house-made tart range. All breads are handmade and include traditional sourdough, French method baguettes and so on.
We do a range of gourmet pies and the croissant and Danish are very popular using French butter to keep it as close to authentic as possible.
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