Three Scientists and a Baker

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Simone and Joel started experimenting with sourdough when they moved to Roleystone with their two children in 2014. What started as a hobby soon engaged Peter, Lisa and their two children, who lived just around the corner. Their persistent encouragement, plus many loaves gifted to friends in the area, prompted the creation of Blue Sky Bread. It turns out you just can’t bake enough bread in a home oven.

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Our two families are excited to welcome you to Blue Sky Bread. We want to create a family friendly space that supports local food, encourages creativity and experimentation, and sells you great bread!

 

How We Make Bread

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The heart and soul of any sourdough is the starter. This little culture of wild yeasts and microbes ferments the flour and other ingredients to develop flavour, improve digestibility, and to add air into the dough. Our starter is over 30 years old, taken from an older starter shared with us during a sourdough course a few years ago. We too will pay the favour forward and share our starter with any keen bakers who are in need.

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We favour slow ferment breads, where the natural yeasts and microbes develop flavour and texture over days, not hours. It can take over 36 hours to go from feeding our starter to baking a loaf. The slower process means we can't produce as much as some bakeries, but we feel the final product more than compensates. If your sourdough bread has any dried or baker’s yeast added, it just isn’t the real deal. The main ingredient we sell is time, something we all need.

 

Our Flour

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Anyone who has travelled through the agricultural regions of WA would have seen the importance of wheat to this state, and the impact on the landscape. Since starting Blue Sky Bread, we have been hoping to build a relationship with a West Australian wheat farming family to directly source the whole wheat component of our flour. We freshly mill this flour in store and it makes up 10-50% of flour in our loaves.

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We were so fortunate to be introduced to the Leske family, who have been farming at ‘Tallerack’ Cascade (near Esperance) for 40 years. Malcolm and Ruth grow chemical free wheat at Tallerack, and their aim is to produce nutritious food, of the best quality and in the safest manner. Their children were all raised on the farm and have also worked there at different points before moving on to university and jobs. The Leskes are serious about what they do, attending soil and sustainable agriculture conferences, and regularly testing their soil. Chatting to Malcolm and Ruth is a real insight into how much care and passion goes into planting a crop without using herbicides to manage the weeds.

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We use white flour sourced from Australia and milled in Northam.

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If you want to learn more about how to make sourdough, we run courses at Blue Sky Bread, and can even do courses at other venues. Contact us for details.

 

Our Breads

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We have a range of bread options, and add to it constantly. Every day we open we sell classic white, classic poppyseed, classic sesame, classic oat, seeded (flax and sunflower seeds), country rye, and everything rye. In addition to these, on different days of the week we offer fruit, olive, jalapeño and cheese, turmeric, and tallerack (whole wheat). We also bake danish rye bread (Rugbrød), a nutritious all rye flour loaf flavoured with pumpkin seeds.

 

Our Sweets

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Our sweets are influenced by classic Australian baking, and the diverse cultural experience of our staff. We make delicious brownies, fruit packed scones, lemon bundt cakes, danish dream cake, linzer tart, cinnamon scrolls, apple danishes, fruit pies and tarts, plus a constant rotation of exciting new experiments. We also serve French made croissants, baked on site.