January, 2005

There is something about excellence that stands out like a beacon. Some bakeries jump out at you, demanding attention and captivating passers by from the pavement. I guess I do judge books by covers, and expect shop windows, lighting, display and even the look of the customers going in and out, to tell me just what is in store on the other side of the glass.

It was a few years back now, in December 2001, when I wandered up Fitzroy Street in Melbourne and stopped outside a bakery. It just had the look of a good place. The bread in the window looked great, and the look of the place with loaves stacked on bare steel shelves, the walls and fittings plain and unfussy, let the colours of the few simple baked bits that I could see really stand out in relief. At that point it was a little rough diamond, set in the jet black walls of an old bit of a 30s building, but it just looked so good. So I marked it down as a place to return to again.

above, a cut through the bannette loaf showing the open aeration in the crumb, and a dark crust.

Baker D. Chirico, the bakery set up and owned by Daniel Chirico, is located in Fitzroy Street, in a part Melbourne that I knew well from my teen years in Australia. When I was growing up, St. Kilda was the bad side of town, which marked it as a must-see destination from every boy from the suburbs. St. Kilda was where the prostitutes were, the shops selling porn magazines, all ringed with more that a hint of the crime we felt sure must be going on in dark alleyways and pubs. Every visit would be somewhat exciting, even when dad would drive through quickly on the way back from the beach, while I'm looking out the car window and wondering what forbidden things were going on at the exact time we passed by. Mum and dad would never make it quite clear what the danger was, so I would sometimes go in after school with a few mates, just to see whether danger would jump out and hoping it would wave about in front of us like a scene from tv. But it never did

Now, due to its leafy inner city location, St. Kilda is prime real estate. This is the area where the Melbourne Grand Prix zooms about. Houses regularly sell for over a million dollars, whilst the working girls have moved out to the suburbs. Though there were always good delis and overblown cake shops (lots of fake whipped cream and chocolate vermicelli), now the area is filled with better restaurants, smart cars and even smarter residents. Who like good bread, understand a crust, and are willing to pay for it.

above, in the front window ready for sale is a newly baked loaf of Casalingua Bianco

Daniel is one of a growing number of bakers around the world who don't see themselves as an extension of the existing baking establishment. New-breed bakers who would rather be seen as the beginning of a new world of bakeshops that cater for the tastes and lives of a generation born well after post war British austerity, who want to eat good things carefully made, and that desire rules the way the shop and live. For them its not about bulking up on cheap stodge, that can be worked away through hard labour in the workplace. Instead this generation looks ahead at a lifetime of sitting at work, typing at keyboards, talking on telephones and driving in cars. This is a moneyed generation who, even before Dr. Aktins made us worry about carbohydrates, wondered if their childhood diet was right for the rich lives they intended to lead.

So customers expect to see words like organic, provenance, wholegrain, sourdough, and biodynamic written somewhere on the label, words that reflects their own sense of social responsibility, a responsibility well coated in a desire to be seen as fashionable. Like new Edwardians, these customers just want the best and expect the way the bakery looks, from the bag the bread is packed in to to the t-shirt worn by the staff, to reflect their attitude. And this sparks work for a host of allied creative and craft based trades, all helping each other keep afloat.

But, best of all, I like the bread here. The crumb has a gutsy moistness that makes it a pleasure to eat in the evenings. Daniel bakes a mean baguette, and the seeded loaves are chewy with a crisp crust. The bakery window looks out onto the street, a common feature that it becoming typical in modern artisan bakeries (from Erez Komarovsky's groundbreaking set up in Tel Aviv in the mid 1990s through to Johan Sörbergs excellent Riddarbageriet bakery in Stockholm). So the mechanics of the breadmaking process are on show 24 hours a day. This requires an eye for order as well as discipline, to stop the view looking like one of flour-strewn carnage

above, the bakery staff at Baker D Chirico