The story so far: 

After illegal origins, the Australia's first sourdough bakery and cafe, which had found its 'native  habitat' in Leura, NSW, also finds its feet. But then, just when I thought I was beginning to get the hang of it, Sydney discovered Leura.

In previous posts, I've talked about my bakery's illegal origins. It has always been 'the bakery that just had to be'. It couldn't wait for money or permission or public understanding of fermented bread. We are in 1993, and Australia has begun to discover, among other things, coffee.

After some four years of prototypes, including Bertha 1 and Bertha 2, Luna, the woodfired oven, landed. With precision.

So, onwards into the future we go. This is the final part of the three part series about the Illegal Bakery. This is the bit where we go legit.

The story of the Illegal Bakery so far could be summarised as follows:

'Sometimes, something's just gotta be done, and you don't have time to see if there's a rule applyin' to it' - Huckleberry Finn

The story of the Illegal Bakery continues!

It's an unusual way to arrive at becoming a career baker, I know. Truth is almost always stranger than fiction, though, and this story adds weight to that argument.

It's actually quite difficult to choose the point where normal existence ceased and my baking obsession took over. But that's what happened. One day, or it could have been many days, a bit at a time, I became more interested in making bread than just about anything else. 

Continental Bread was one of my family's staple breads. There are numerous variations on the theme of a traditional yeasted sourdough recipe. I call them all 'Semi Leaven' breads, because they contain some sourdough starter and a tiny amount of yeast, which creates a light yet flavoursome bread, with the kind of crust that's typically Italian.

This White Sourdough bread recipe utilises the 'dough starter' sourdough method. If you don't have starter in the dough form, it can be purchased  This bread will happily be baked in a tin, or on the sole (hearth) of the oven.

Desem, or 'dough' starter is one of the easiest ways of making sourdough bread at home. It requires substantially less feeding than a regular liquid starter.