After almost four years in the making, Quentin Berthonneau’s Oji House is just about ready to open its doors.

Located in Preston, Melbourne, Oji House will be an online boutique bakery as well as a dedicated sourdough baking school for professionals.

Quentin, formerly of Q Le Baker, said the concept came to him when he realised he needed to design a business model that allowed him to do what he loved to do – that is baking – but would also provide him with the means to share his knowledge with the wider industry.

Burnt out by the demands of running the immensely popular Q Le Baker in Prahran, Quentin said through Oji House he has designed a business model that will work with him.

“I wanted to explore different business models in order to find what could work long term. Whether that was subscriptions or not, deliveries or not, how many days of teaching versus production. Slowly over time it developed into what it will be now: two-and-a-half days of classes, and two-and-a-half days of production with no weekend work unless I want to participate in fun and meaningful events,” Quentin said.

“There is a kickstarter to get the word out and help gauge how many people are interested, and what interests them most. The kickstarter will allow us to make sure our space can accommodate people comfortably in our classes, but also make sure we can produce high quality and affordable products.”

Quentin said he had decided to focus on professional classes after watching many of his friends in the struggle to find staff and having to work long hours or instead simplifying and standardising their productions.

“I also see many people working harder than they should, and I hope that through knowledge on fermentations and processes they will be able to plan their production in a way that’s more measurable,” he said.

“I expect some of my most important classes to be the sourdough baking fundamentals (Level 1) and the advanced one (Level 2) as well as the panettone masterclasses. Then there’s specialty classes like one where we will cover many different styles of brioche or many different styles of baguettes and flatter products. The point of difference here is that everything is 100 per cent sourdough and no commercial yeast is used at all.

“I am just really excited to create a space to welcome bakers and to see how the industry can evolve together into something bigger. We do have a strong food scene and strong Viennoiserie scene and I believe the bread scene needs a bit of support.”

Since 2019 Quentin has been on the teaching staff at L’Ecole Internationale de Boulangerie in France in addition to his consulting work that has seen him work with more than 70 bakeries in France as well as AP Bakery and Flour and Stone here in Australia. He is also captaining the Australian team at the Panettone World Championships in Italy in October.