PLAYING WITH FIRE
Cherry Moon’s Kimmy Gastmeier shares her passion for wood-fired baking, writes Tristan Lutze.
Cherry Moon’s Kimmy Gastmeier shares her passion for wood-fired ovens and how it influences her baking, writes TRISTAN LUTZE.
Cherry Moon’s signature fig-leaf sourdough (inset); sourdough coated in poppy seeds, sesame seeds and caraway. Opposite: cherry pie (inset); spelt puff pastry, almond and seasonal fruit tart. PREVIOUS PAGES Cherry pies with spelt sour cream pastry.
Every morning, cakes, scones, focaccias, cinnamon scrolls and a range of obsession-inducing loaves (including the bakery’s signature fig leaf-adorned sourdough) await purchase at Cherry Moon General Store, still warm from the brick wood-fired oven at the rear of the store. The hearth at the heart of the popular Sydney bakery, tucked away in a back street of Annandale in the city’s inner-west, is the manifestation of owner and head baker Kimmy Gastmeier’s professional and personal journey, along with centuries of wood-fired knowledge spanning cultures and continents.
“It’s an Alan Scott oven,” says Gastmeier, referring to the caravansized installation she commissioned for the bakery; previously a De Bortoli wine cellar. “He was a blacksmith from Tasmania who was angry that centuries of wood-fired culture was being forgotten.”
Scott, who died in 2009, researched traditional wood-fired ovens around the world, including ancient Roman and African varieties, before devising his own model that maximised heat retention and equalisation. Having been unable to find a property with a suitable existing oven, Gastmeier contacted Brisbane-based Dennis Benson, who had first-hand experience building ovens with Scott, and set about convincing him to build hers.
“Dennis was really sceptical about why we wanted this particular oven at first,” Gastmeier says of the semi-retired septuagenarian, as she uses a shovel to shatter a burning ironbark log deep within the oven. “But when we met he could see my dream and my passion, and he really wanted to see that dream flourish.”
The foundations of Gastmeier’s dream were forged in Mike McEnearney’s Kitchen by Mike eatery in Rosebery. The pair had first worked together at Rockpool, before McEnearney invited the New Zealand-born chef to come and learn how to craft breads and pastries in the new kitchen’s oven.
“That first day, holding the living fermentation in my hands and working with the fire that was my ‘oh my god’ moment. I was addicted,” recalls Gastmeier, who had taped her great-grandmother’s recipe cards on the wall beside the oven. “My time at Kitchen by Mike gave me the foundation for everything I’ve done since.”
“The oven and I listen to each other. I tell it what I want, and it tells me what it wants. You can see that in the results.”
The construction of Cherry Moon’s own oven – named Apollonia after Prince’s Purple Rain co-star (“Cherry Moon” is another Prince reference) – took Benson three weeks. When he asked for labourers to help him, Gastmeier leapt in. “Because I was going to be baking in it, I felt like it was essential that I understand it on a deeper level. It’s because I formed that connection to the oven during the build that I feel at one with how it functions now.”
That connection is critical, says Gastmeier, because Apollonia requires plenty of attention. Mornings start as early as 5am, when the oven’s heavy iron door – procured from a retired gold rush-era scotch oven in Ballarat via Gumtree – is opened and the coals of the previous day’s fire cleared away (into a cavity, where their gentle heat cooks racks of vegetables for the next day’s sandwiches, soups and sausage rolls).
Trays of focaccia are scorched first, taking only 5 to 6 minutes in the 340 degrees Celsius ambient heat trapped in the oven’s layers of bricks, concrete and vermiculite. Next, as the temperature gradually begins to drop, the day’s loaves are baked 36 at a time, followed by cinnamon scrolls, tarts and other delicious things.
By 8.30am, the baking done, a new fire is lit for the following day’s bake, and at 2pm the door sealed shut again. It’s all part of a routine, for both oven and baker, that is hugely demanding, but offers plenty in return.
“The oven and I listen to each other. I tell it what I want, and it tells me what it wants. You can see that in the results.”