Some of Sydney’s biggest names in baking have packed up and moved to Byron Bay for a tree-change, making a stir with their organic and ethical range of breads and pastries. baking business chats with sam saulwick from the bread social, an artisan bakery operating out of byron’s sustainable darling, the Farm.

The organic, local and ethically sourced trend in the baking industry has been taken to the next level with the masterminds and master bakers behind The Bread Social: Tom Scott, Sam Saulwick and Paul Giddings.

Working together at some of Sydney’s biggest bakeries: Bourke Street Bakery and Central Baking Depot, Tom, Paul and Sam found they had a mutual desire to make something more organic, rustic and artisan. Paul knew the boys who had taken on the tender for the restaurant at The Farm, Three Blue Ducks, and the idea of having a bakery at The Farm was born.

There isn’t huge range of artisan bread being produced in Byron Bay. The Bread Social are filling the gap with their prized sourdough baked on a stone deck with longer fermentation, using organic flour with 80 per cent hydration. While sourdough is their specialty, The Bread Social produces a wide selection of baked goodies from panini to brioche to blue cheese panna raison with grapes and rosemary and a delectable range of pastries.

For The Bread Social, it’s all about what’s seasonal, showcasing what’s being produced in the area and catering to community desires.

“We do some light brioche for the local cafés and restaurants… that seems to be the flavour of the month. Everyone’s got these ideas of opening burger bars here at the moment,” Sam laughs.

The Bread Social have a close relationship with the farmers at The Farm, helping them tailor their recipes to what’s currently being produced and what’s next in the ground, integrating these ingredients into their range. Every morning the chooks on The Farm lay the fresh eggs The Bread Social use in their breads and pastries.

Visitors to The Farm can enjoy a range of rustic and wholesome specialty items by The Bread Social sold at the Three Blue Ducks store and The Bread Social stand, including Sam’s current favourite.

“Tommy’s been doing this mushroom and ricotta salsa verde roast pumpkin savoury panini with a little goats curd,” he says.

“They’re really simple flavours but we’ve been lucky having these really special providers and producers close by and you can kind of just let it speak for itself.”

One of the most important aspects of The Bread Social and The Farm is the idea that they’re selling a quality of life to their customers. Sam has a young family and quips Paul’s probably not too far off; Tom maybe a bit further down the track. It’s important to all of the guys from The Bread Social to sustain a better work-life balance and be aware of where food actually comes from.

The founder of The Farm, Tom Lane, comes from a corporate background in Sydney with a holiday home in the hinterland. When Tom and his wife Emma watched their daughter interact with what was growing in her veggie garden, taking joy from eating green beans she grew herself, the idea of The Farm was born.

“Essentially it’s breaking away from the idea that where do peas come from? It’s not the freezer,” Sam explains.

The team at The Bread Social relocated independently, with Paul’s partner working at the local primary school and Tom’s at the local high school. While some people may come and go, they made the conscious decision to tie themselves to the area and be a part of the Byron Shire community.

Sam’s father was a restaurateur in the area, so it has been particularly rewarding for him to return and rekindle the family tradition.

To make their bread and butter, The Bread Social has a wholesale side of the business, offering sourdough, seeded sourdough, fruit, rye, wholemeal and seeded loaves, as well as their pastry range of croissants, panna raison and season fruit danishes. Their wholesale range maintains their local and sustainable ethos.

“We’ve got a local vendor in the area, we call him ‘Citrus Nick’, but he does a wide variety of stone fruits and he’s literally just up on the hill in Newrybar. We know it’s A-grade stone fruit coming out of the trees and he makes sure we get it really quick,” Sam says.

The Bread Social has approximately 20-30 wholesale customers in the immediate area and these are primarily are people who have a passion for organic and sustainable products. Customers may pay a little more for those types of items but, according to Sam, they know The Bread Social tries to use organic and certainly Australian ingredients whenever possible, with ingredients first and foremost coming from The Farm itself.

The Bread Social has only been operating for a year, but Tom, Sam and Paul already have big plans for the future, hoping to open an educational side of the business, particularly in sourdough shaping and making, as well as bread and pastry classes for people with all ranges of experience.

“We’d probably look at building something ideally onsite at The Farm, something a little more of a hub so we can perhaps expand our range… a café-bakery style setting would be ideal for us,” Sam says.

Until then they’ll continue to wake up at 3am with the country chill in the air, spreading organic flour over wooden benchtops. He can’t see The Bread Social opening a 400sq m warehouse and working under fluorescent lights any time soon.