This traditional bakery is celebrating its workhorse oven’s 100th birthday

ABC NEWS (Australia)

While most people are fast asleep at 3am, Australia’s bakers rise and shine. In South Australia’s Barossa wine region, a traditional bakery is celebrating a century of firing up its historic wood oven.

Transcript

00:00Third-generation baker Corey Fechner is passionate about long-ferment sourdough, his grandfather's

00:08tried and tested recipes and the beating heart of his Tanunda bakery, this 100-year-old scotch

00:16wood oven.

00:17As far as we know, this is the longest continuously running wood-fired oven in Australia.

00:24They were the golden brown standard, but these days are rare.

00:29The bigger companies didn't like these little bakeries competing with them, so they knocked

00:33a lot of them in or just shut them down in general.

00:36But no offer from Big Bread could stand in their way.

00:40It means fresh faces come through and rise to the challenge.

00:43I couldn't ask for a better place to be a baker.

00:47I absolutely love it and I started my apprenticeship in 2020 and I was Jarim's apprentice and

00:54that's how we met.

00:57It's just blossomed, as they say.

00:59Jarim did a fantastic job, he puts buns in the oven and put bun in the oven as well.

01:04And we have a little Rory in December, just two days after Christmas.

01:08These wood ovens are designed to last about 50 years.

01:12After doubling that, this beast isn't what it used to be.

01:15We've just lost a lot of efficiency out of it, bricks are starting to fall in, it's old

01:20and it needs some love, so the aim was to get through to 100 years, we've done that

01:26now and now we can give it some love and hopefully get another 100 years out of it.

01:30For another 100 years of happy customers.

01:33I think it's important, personally, because mass production, sorry, it just doesn't taste

01:39as nice.

01:40I hope it doesn't die out, the traditional bakery, but yeah, we'll try and keep it alive

01:44as long as possible.

01:45Future-proofing their slice of history.

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