The Lost Loaf: Lost is found in a South Australian market

Emma Shearer always planned on opening her own bakery, but when the opportunity presented itself, things happened a little more swiftly than she imagined. Even faster has been the success she found in her Adelaide bread and pastry shop, The Lost Loaf.

“It was something I always knew I would do but I wasn’t sure when,” says Emma Shearer on making the change from chef to bakery owner.

Emma began her career as a chef but quickly realised her passion lay with pastry.

“I wasn’t really inspired with the savoury side of cooking,” she explains.

“I didn’t really enjoy cleaning fish or cutting up meat, and I liked the technical side of the pastry world.”

Emma’s first role as a pastry chef was at The Manse, and later on she moved to Magill Estate. There, executive chef Jock Zonfrillo was putting a core team together, and he approached Emma to see if she wanted to come and work with them.

Emma only worked at Magill Estate for a couple of months before it closed for renovations. During the works, the team Jock had put together spent their time researching and developing recipes.

I spent a solid four to six months just baking bread every day, trialling different flours from the area. It was really nice to have the time to do that,” Emma recalls.

When the opportunity came for Emma to move to into baking for herself, she says, “It happened really quickly. I was on maternity leave for 12 months so that gave me a bit of time to think about it.”

It was a friend who put Emma in touch with the people at Plant 4 Bowden, a market held in the old Clipsal building just outside Adelaide’s CBD. The weekly markets opened in October 2016. When Emma met the owners, the now-bustling markets were still an empty site. Emma was able to work off the plan to design the bakery to her specifications.

The Lost Loaf bakery sits on the mezzanine level, which overlooks the busy market below where customers purchase products from the shop.

“To have the shop directly underneath the bakery… I just couldn’t imagine it being any different. It just works really well,” Emma says.

Being in a market environment means The Lost Loaf operates differently from most bakeries. The market opens in the afternoons on Wednesday and Friday, plus all day Saturday. During the week, Emma doesn’t start baking until 9am and then bakes through until 3pm or 4pm in the afternoon.

“It’s just a different way of operating,” Emma explains.

“Instead of buying bread in the morning, people can buy it in the afternoon for dinner. When people finish work they can still pick up a loaf that was baked fresh an hour earlier.”

As well as being convenient for locals, Emma believes the later starting hours attract quality staff.

“It’s much better for us; we’re not working through the night so you get really good people to work with you,” she explains.

On Saturdays, however, the team starts baking at 2am.

“We open the shop at 9am on Saturdays. We have two guys upstairs baking while the shop’s open, so bread’s continually coming down. We usually sell out by 2pm. It always feels like we bake so much and don’t know if we’ll sell it all, but it always goes,” Emma laughs.

A side of the business Emma didn’t see coming, and didn’t realise she’d find so fulfilling, is the personal contact she has with her customers.

“I really enjoy the interaction with customers, and I’m really getting to know them now,” she says.

“I enjoyed my time as a chef but, working in the kitchen, you don’t really get to see that side.”

Emma’s signature loaf is a kind of middle ground between traditional sourdough and a white loaf.

“I do use yeast as well as the leaven,” Emma says.

“I love sourdough but I don’t like the heaviness that can sometimes come out, so it’s a nice middle ground of a little lightness from the extra yeast but still keeping the old techniques of a long fermentation.”

Emma uses a three-day process to prepare her loaves, using a starter she’s kept going for 10 years.

“I started that culture with a chef from The Manse, and I’ve just kept it with me everywhere I’ve been. It stayed in my fridge for about 18 months when Magill Estate was closed for renovations,” she says.

Emma also makes a fruit sourdough that’s become a real favourite among the bakery’s loyal customers.

“It actually came about because people were requesting it,” she explains.

“It’s packed full of fruit. Whenever we make it we’re always like, have we weighed that correctly? Because it just looks like such a huge amount of fruit. It’s lovely.”

The Lost Loaf makes about four different kinds of breads, including baguettes, which they use to make sandwiches for the Wednesday and Friday market. Emma says the bakery probably has more of a focus on bread but that her time as a pastry chef means she also offers quality pastries.

“We do pastries, croissants, fruit Danishes, scrolls and panne chocolate and then whatever fruits are in season for different tarts and éclairs. Anything that’s in the French way, we make,” she says.

Asked what has surprised her most since opening the bakery in November last year, Emma pauses.

“It’s a lot bigger than I thought it was going to be,” she admits.

“I thought I’d just open two days a week and, the amount of bread I’m making is triple what I thought I’d be selling. I’ve been blown away with the response.”

Emma plans to open a retail store in Adelaide’s CBD when her son is a little bit older.

“All we need is a hole in the wall. In Europe it’s so common to have a bread shop on every corner; we just don’t have that here. I’m looking for a really old building but I’m not in a hurry,” she says.

For now, Emma’s happy with how The Lost Loaf has developed. Her husband started his own wine label, The Yetti and the Coconut, at the same time as she opened The Lost Loaf, so the couple spend their time developing their businesses and caring for their two-year-old son, Charlie, who is a regular visitor to the Sunday markets.

“He loves bread, and he’s quite friendly with the stall holders,” Emma says, explaining she grew up around the antique store her parents owned and ran for 18 years.

“I have really fond memories of it,” she says, “so I’m hoping it will be like that for Charlie as well.”