While most people are fast asleep at 3am, Australia’s bakers rise and shine. In South Australia’s Barossa wine region, a traditional bakery is celebrating a century of firing up its historic wood oven.
Category
📺
TVTranscript
00:00Third-generation baker Corey Fechner is passionate about long-ferment sourdough, his grandfather's
00:08tried and tested recipes and the beating heart of his Tanunda bakery, this 100-year-old scotch
00:16wood oven.
00:17As far as we know, this is the longest continuously running wood-fired oven in Australia.
00:24They were the golden brown standard, but these days are rare.
00:29The bigger companies didn't like these little bakeries competing with them, so they knocked
00:33a lot of them in or just shut them down in general.
00:36But no offer from Big Bread could stand in their way.
00:40It means fresh faces come through and rise to the challenge.
00:43I couldn't ask for a better place to be a baker.
00:47I absolutely love it and I started my apprenticeship in 2020 and I was Jarim's apprentice and
00:54that's how we met.
00:57It's just blossomed, as they say.
00:59Jarim did a fantastic job, he puts buns in the oven and put bun in the oven as well.
01:04And we have a little Rory in December, just two days after Christmas.
01:08These wood ovens are designed to last about 50 years.
01:12After doubling that, this beast isn't what it used to be.
01:15We've just lost a lot of efficiency out of it, bricks are starting to fall in, it's old
01:20and it needs some love, so the aim was to get through to 100 years, we've done that
01:26now and now we can give it some love and hopefully get another 100 years out of it.
01:30For another 100 years of happy customers.
01:33I think it's important, personally, because mass production, sorry, it just doesn't taste
01:39as nice.
01:40I hope it doesn't die out, the traditional bakery, but yeah, we'll try and keep it alive
01:44as long as possible.
01:45Future-proofing their slice of history.