The road to success has been a bumpy one for Tom Edwards and Betty Milner, who have now been able to successfully open Iris the Bakery in Brunswick, Melbourne. The bakery is named after the couple’s one-and-a-half-year-old daughter, Iris, and has been the ultimate goal of the couple since meeting in 2015.

Tom, who has more than 12 years’ experience working as a chef in kitchens around the world, realised that he wanted to open a bakery during a three-year stint in Copenhagen.

“The bakers that I look up to around the world often come from a chef background and working in restaurants that are very connected to where their food comes from and how it’s grown, and they take that same attitude into the bread and pastry,” Tom told Broadsheet.

“When you learn about these flours and see them as living ingredients, not just a static thing that can sit on a shelf for a year and be exactly the same, it becomes a really interesting world.”

Iris the Bakery was able to get off the ground thanks to help from a crowdfunding campaign that the couple ran earlier this year and is now off to a flying start.

Iris has become known for its bread, which Tom bakes with a wholegrain flour known for its ease of digestion, flavour, and nutritional value.

“It’s not shaped into something pretty, but it’s nourishing with minimal intervention. The benefit in simplifying the process is that it allows the fermentation to continue on its own without interruption,” he said.

Iris is currently putting out much more than bread, with pasties, cardamom buns, and rolls also featuring prominently on the menu.