BACK TO BASICS
A chef-turned-baker from Sydney’s northern beaches believes slow, simple food is the way of the future, writes KARLIE VERKERK.
Chef-turned-baker Tom Eadie believes slow, simple food is the way of the future.
Hands covered with dirt, Tom Eadie yanks a bright purple radish from the earth then chomps down on it, soil and all. “I think, now more than ever, to be innovative is to be simple,” he says, after he swallows breakfast. Going back to basics is Eadie’s main ethos, both personally and professionally. The chef-turned-baker – and owner of Berkelo, a string of artisanal bakeries on Sydney’s northern beaches – believes it’s time to slow down and rediscover real connections.
“We need to focus more on community and go back to the things that we’ve moved away from, which have been part of human civilisation for thousands of years,” says Eadie. “We’re kind of in the ‘all on your own, in your own apartment’ mentality, eating processed things that haven’t been cared for. We’re not made to be eating in that fashion.”
Eadie, who was previously the executive chef at The Boathouse Group, has spent the past nine months transforming a former horse arena in Terrey Hills into an edible haven. The organic produce grown at his farm supplies all four of his bakeries and is also sold at local markets.
“Our corner-store concept is quite practical – it’s about providing sustenance to a town and taking things back to the way they used to be,” explains Eadie. “There used to be a mill and a bakery in every town, there were farms too,
and as the world has commercialised, more franchises have taken over. In my opinion they don’t provide nutrition, they do the exact opposite.”
This back-to-basics approach has proven successful for Eadie, who opened his first bakery in Brookvale’s industrial area in 2016. But it is something he has developed through trial and error.
“It has been a journey,” he says. “When I started Berkelo, I didn’t even want to have a coffee machine, I just wanted to sell a couple of loaves of bread. I quickly worked out that it wasn’t a good business idea; it wasn’t sustainable.
“I believe now that I’m cooking for people, not for myself. It’s not that fun spending three days making rabbit pies and no one eats them because they’re scared of rabbit. That’s the kind of stuff we were doing originally. I’ve had to learn to lose my chef ego. It took us two years to put a ham and cheese sandwich on the menu – everyone loves a ham and cheese sandwich!”
But it’s the effort that goes into Berkelo’s simple ham and cheese sandwich that sets it apart.
“It’s about finding the person who makes and cares about the cheddar, versus the person who doesn’t care about the cheddar,” says Eadie. “And when you bring those three things together that are made with care – the ham, the cheese, the bread – it’s a fucking good time.”
The bread he’s referring to is a flavour-packed slow-fermented sourdough, which is made from grains milled on-site in an Austrian stone mill.
“One of the main reasons we have the mill in the bakery is so that we can use the whole grain, therefore you get all the nutrition. If you respect the process, bread can be a health food, too.
“This year, our goal is to eventually be using single-origin grains, just as you would see in coffee. We’d like to feature a different grain from a different part of Australia and different farmer every month. Then we can build our own flavour profiles and knowledge around the grains. There’s a lot to learn.”
In addition to making sourdough pasta, kombucha and pickled and fermented vegetables to sell in store, Eadie’s current project is growing herbs and plants on the farm to make tea.
“We’re still trialling different things, but in the ground at the moment there are nine types of lettuce, there’s plenty of cabbage, there’s leeks, fennel, some Asian greens, rosella flowers, ginger, radish…” he says. “We’ve also recently planted around 50 native trees at the bottom of the property – mostly fruit trees and plants like river mint and lemon myrtle. I’m looking forward to experimenting with those too.”
Although, Eadie hasn’t been spending as much time at the farm as he’d like. Construction on the fourth bakery in Manly was completed only a few weeks ago. The new hole-in-the-wall design further consolidates Eadie’s corner-store concept, and encourages locals to swing by and grab a loaf of sourdough, a box of fresh produce and a cup of batch-brew Single O coffee straight from the tap.
“Since coronavirus we’ve lost almost 40 wholesale customers, but the retail side of the business has been pumping, because people want simple food; they want to pick up a loaf of bread to take home,” he says.
Nourishing a community is Eadie’s driving force and his proudest achievement. “It makes me feel warm. The satisfaction you get from cooking someone a good meal, and the exchange you get in return is a smile, that’s what you love as a chef.
“I just love food. I love cooking people food, now it’s about taking it to the next stage for me – if you can cook and grow it’s twice as good.”
Absolutely nothing goes to waste either. All food scraps collected from the bakeries are sent back to the farm twice a week to be composted – a couple of old baths that sit off to one side of the field are filled with worms. The compost is then used to reinvigorate the soil and the process starts all over again.
And as for pest control, it’s all organic. “We use lime to keep aphids away. We don’t do much weeding either, we kind of just let that stuff go, but the nets help to keep bugs and little butterflies off the plants.”
Eadie’s forward-thinking mindset and drive to champion a simpler lifestyle, especially during challenging times, are important ingredients to his success. But he’s not done yet, with even bigger plans in store for the future of Berkelo.
“I want to make sure that our quality keeps improving. We need to constantly reassess our products to ensure they’re better and become even more sustainable,” he says.
“At some stage I think we’ll all have to slow down and simplify our lives. I think it’s necessary for the world as well.”
berkelo.com.au; @berkelo.au
“We need to focus more on community and go back to the things that we’ve moved away from, which have been part of human civilisation for thousands of years.”