Bread worth waiting for
Halden began with one family's rye loaf and a single oven in Collingwood, and we still bake it the slow way.
A rye loaf from Halden
Annika Lunde's grandmother baked dark rye in Halden, the Norwegian town our bakery is named after. The recipe came to Melbourne in her handwriting, and Annika grew up on that loaf: dense, sour and better each day.
She baked it at home for years before she baked it for anyone else, on a borrowed stone in a domestic oven, with a starter kept alive in a jar on the kitchen bench.
Learning the long ferment
Annika spent eight years in other people's bakeries, from the overnight shift to the bench. She learnt how a slow, cold ferment builds flavour, how a wood fired oven holds its heat, and how to wait for the dough.
Nobody taught me to hurry. The bakers I learnt from let the dough take the night, and the bread was better for it.
In 2009 she came home to Collingwood with a starter in a jar and a plan for one oven, one bench and bread worth waiting for.
One oven, then three
The bakehouse opened on Wellington Street in 2009 with a single oven and a queue by the second Saturday. Northcote followed on High Street in 2016, then Brunswick East on Lygon Street in 2021.
Every loaf for all three is still shaped in Collingwood before dawn and driven out while it is warm.
A recipe for patience
Every loaf takes 36 hours. The starter is fed at dawn, the dough mixed by noon and folded by hand through the afternoon, then left to rise slowly overnight in the cool room.
The hearth is lit at 3am and the first loaves come out at six. Our starter, Old Nils, has been fed every day since 2009.
Our mission
Honest bread from Victorian grain, made without shortcuts and sold while it is still warm.
Our flour, grown with care
Our flour is stone milled from wheat and rye grown on a handful of farms in western Victoria.
Milling slowly keeps the germ and bran in the flour, so the bread tastes of the grain. We buy direct, by the season, from growers who look after their soil.
