When owner of Bread & Butter Bakery, Isabel Pasch, first started baking organic bread in 2010, the little bakery in the backstreets of Ellerslie called Paris Berlin was the first in Auckland to do so.
More often, people are seeking out organic products and are aware of the risks of chemicals in food, although sourdough baking remains a mysterious process to many. There is a certain magic in seeing flour and water mixed together come alive and grow. The long and slow fermentation of traditional sourdough baking means that the bread is more nutritious, more flavoursome, and easier to digest. Like many of the now rediscovered fermented foods, sourdough bread promotes the growth of healthy gut microbiota - the community of bacteria that live in our guts.
It is the area of nutrition, gut health and environmental science, that Isabel’s former life as a microbiologist and science communicator in Berlin and her New Zealand life as a baker come together.
Not only being able to explain to people in theory why traditional fermented foods are so good for you, but making a beautiful bread loaf that people can then touch, smell and eat, is what keeps her getting up at 4am.
“There is nothing better than a customer saying they thought they’d never be able to eat bread again, because it made them feel so bad. Until they discovered how different our organic wheat-free sourdoughs are, she says. “Bread is a wonderful food that in it’s true form does not deserve the bad name that the industrial fare has given it.”
For those, who want to learn more about sourdough baking and the nutritional and environmental issues around bread and other foods, Bread & Butter Bakery runs sourdough bread baking classes on a semi regular basis. Check out its Facebook or website for more information.
For those who just want to buy a good loaf and eat it straight away, the Little Bread
& Butter store in Ponsonby Central and the main cafe and bakery at 34 Westmoreland Street in Grey Lynn has a daily selection of good sourdough loaves and bread rolls. They have a wide range of handmade pastries, cakes, pies and other savouries plus
a brunch menu.