The garage baker’s life: hot bread, cold swims and gardening
The aroma of fresh bread wafts out of Franziska von Hunerbein’s tiny bakery, swirling through the air with classical music.
It’s an idyllic setting, with the door open to her productive garden, where figs are ripening on a wall, bees buzz and there are chickens busy turning garden waste and scraps into compost and eggs.
Franziska turned her breadmaking expertise into a home-based business a few years ago when she needed a job, and decided to create her own.
It was a natural progression, she said. “I started making bread years ago when my children were little and I wanted to give them good bread. Being German, I have the bread gene, having good bread is extremely important to us.
“It’s something lovely I can bring from my culture. Germany has brought a lot of things into the world, bread is one of the good ones, and I’m happy to share that goodness.”
She is totally self-taught.
“I always baked for my family, then friends started asking me to bake for them too, so I started slowly, slowly, building up the bakery.”
She started baking the loaves in her home kitchen, then when she moved to her current house 3 1/2 years ago, a friend helped her convert the single garage into a cute little bakery.
“I’m fascinated with bread, it’s made with such simple ingredients, it is magical what deliciousness comes when you mix water, flour and salt.”
She uses fermented starter cultures to rise the bread – a rye and a rewana version, which she made using potato, but now feeds on organic white flour.
“I call them the mamas, for me they are the life-bringers, the mother cultures.
“Sourdough mamas help to prepare the dough and ingredients so a bread is created that’s good for our systems,” she said.
“Humans have been consuming it for thousands of years, these organisms are our friends.”
Franziska bakes five days a week, and supplies still-warm loaves to Crazy Pumpkin in New Plymouth, Down To Earth and Oakura Meat and Deli.
“I have some very loyal customers.” It’s a physical job, all done by hand. She mixes and stretches the doughs in large containers, and hefts 25kg sacks of flour and wheat, which she grinds into wholemeal, and lifts the loaves on big trays in and out of a large oven.
Loaves are baked each morning after they rise overnight.
Around the baking, Franziska fits in a regular morning swim in the sea, with the Dippers, a group of women who head to East End Beach every day.
Then it’s time to deliver her loaves, each of which has a heart stencilled on to it using flour. “It’s bread baked with heart,” she said.
“All around the world, every culture has their way of making bread, it is a very old love story.” She also makes kombucha, a fermented drink known for its health properties. Franziska flavours it with produce from her garden, so the flavours change depending on what is being harvested.
At present the large fridge in her bakery is full of plum kombucha.
“Soon there will be feijoa kombucha, the tree is laden,” she said.
A good percentage of her family’s meals come from the garden.
“At the moment it’s tomatoes every day, tomato soup, tomato salad, roast tomatoes. All that with bread and cheeses, you can’t go wrong.”
Franziska started Taranaki’s first crop swap in 2013, organising a regular get-together with her then neighbours in Merrilands to swap produce from their gardens.
Since then, it’s grown into a movement across Taranaki and to other regions, and she recently handed the care of the network to Sustainable Taranaki, so she can concentrate on her baking.
“I love feeding people with good food that makes them feel good, it’s a great honour to do that,” she said.