Phillip and Maia Gould are drawn away from their day jobs in Canberra to become footpath vendors each Saturday morning until their sourdough sells out. Photo: John Thistleton.
Ever since a butcher met a baker at Grabben Gullen in 2021, discerning foodies in nearby Crookwell have been licking their lips.
First, though, the story of Maia and Phillip Gould’s sourdough baking began in 2013, when Maia’s mother, Penelope Sargeant, gave her daughter a five-year-old sourdough starter and taught her what she had learned at an artisan stone bread-making course in Victoria.
Every week, Maia baked delicious sourdough for Phillip and their two children.
In 2021, the Canberra couple bought a 100-acre farm at Grabben Gullen and met their neighbour, Graham Gibbs, a butcher who owns ‘Meat’s A Treat’ on Crookwell’s main street.
Chatting with Graham one morning, they asked about his dry-aged beef.
“I love it,” he told them. “I just love a steak and some crusty sourdough bread.”
Maia’s face lit up. “I make sourdough,” she said. So Graham invited her to make a couple of loaves and he would try to sell them.
“I started off with my little oven at home,” Maia said. “Back then, I was baking in a Dutch oven; you need quite a lot of steam for a sourdough.”
In no time, she had increased to four loves, while Graham passed on her phone number, enabling grateful customers to order ahead.
“I was collecting all of these numbers on my phone, including people who were interested in sourdough bread,” Maia said.
“I got up to eight loaves on a weekend, but because it is all in the oven and you can only bake two at a time, I was taking hours and hours.”
Researching ovens thoroughly, Phillip, who works in the public service in Canberra, found some old-school Belgian ovens comprising three heating elements and big stones. One oven has the capacity to bake 24 loaves at a time – just what they needed.
“That’s when things really started to take off,” Maia said. Her day job is at the ANU School of Cybernetics in the College of Systems and Society, looking at the responsible use of artificial intelligence and emerging technology and how they impact society.
But each Saturday, she sees first-hand how her six or seven sourdough varieties, including fruit loaf, multi-grain and Tuscan olive loaf, are impacting a rural community.
“I have also done cranberry and walnut, and an experimental one with turmeric in it,” she said. She sold that loaf to one of her regulars and he raved about it.
Like most micro bakeries, the Goulds are forever trying to source the most cost-effective suppliers of their ingredients.
“We bake too much to make it affordable by just buying everything at the supermarket, but not in a big enough scale to go for a wholesaler because you need a certain amount that you buy every month, set up an account, and no one is going to deliver out here as well.”
Sourdough baker Maia Gould never tires of seeing ‘oven spring’, that wonderful moment when her dough expands and the ‘ear’ on the loaf – a flap of crust – forms. Photo: John Thistleton.
She buys her ingredients from Natural Living in Belconnen in the Capital Food Market, Ben Furney Flour Mills, Dubbo, and sometimes at Costco.
“Natural Living are great – they have multi-grain mix and fruit,” she said.
Phillip says they use herbs and lemons from their garden for their olive loaf. It would be nice if we could source more from the local region. We have spoken to some olive producers and are hoping to start using some of their olives,” he said.
Maia has turned baking into a scientific challenge, ‘reading’ the temperamental wild yeast and seeing the dough come alive and wobbly, ready to shape in her bannetons (baskets).
These hold the dough while it is cold-proofing in the fridge overnight, developing the flavours more.
“It slows everything down and you get all those beneficial bacteria developing in the loaf,” she said.
“You turn them out and into a hot oven with the steam, then you get this beautiful rise.”
Taking 36 hours, the process begins in Canberra on Thursday after work when the starter comes out of the fridge and ends when hot loaves come out of the oven in Grabben Gullen on Saturday morning and are whisked off to Crookwell by 9:30 am.
Well-served by home producers, perhaps it’s only a matter of time in Crookwell before a candlestick-maker joins the butcher and baker on Saturday mornings.
Meat’s a Treat is located at 95 Goulburn St, Crookwell. They’re open from 8 am until 6 pm Monday to Friday.
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