For the last 28 years, north Canterbury baker Rachel Scott has carefully made around 400 loaves of bread every week. While it’s “slightly absurd” to be so hands-on, she wouldn’t have it any other way.
“I know exactly what's gone on with each loaf. And if I'm putting my name on it, I just want to get confidence that there's consistency and quality. And I sleep well at night with knowing that.”
Photo: Barbara Scott/Guy Frederick
While she initially wanted to be an architect or an artist, Scott first started making sourdough at home while working in kitchens in London in the late 1980s and early 1990s. She didn’t have any formal culinary training, but influential chefs Angela Dwyer and Alistair Little both saw her potential.
“I was in London for about six years… [Angela] loved Kiwis as workers in kitchens, and just let me learn. I fell in love with bread quite early.”
Scott, who lives in Amberley, says breadmaking is “a really serene process” that uses all the senses.
“You're engaging with the dough and trying to read what's going on with it. I think you have to focus on it completely and it's just a grounding activity to do.”
Scott makes European-style breads, inspired by her travels in France and Italy.
Ciabatta, handmade by Rachel Scott Photo: Rachel Scott
“Ciabatta has been the one that I make most of. It’s got a lovely open crumb that just absorbs or matches beautifully with olive oil, being Italian in nature. I think it's just very versatile with the foods that it matches with. Then I have the sourdough, the pain au levain, which is more of a earthy flavour… they're probably the two that are the most popular.”
She has always employed a gentle approach to breadmaking - apart from having “one big mixer with a very gentle wishbone arm” and some stonebased deck ovens, everything else is done by hand. She doesn’t use any proving cabinets, meaning her breadmaking requires constant adjustments depending on the temperature of the room.
“I love the fact I'm probably not too much of a technician, I'm more intuitive with my baking.”
Home bakers should trust their intuition too, she says.
“I think it's just an idea to perhaps visualise your ideal loaf or what you'd like to achieve and Google a few recipes, but perhaps repeat [making] it for a few times, so you start to get familiar with the techniques and results. I think it's about developing your own intuition to craft a loaf that is personal to yourself.
“I think a loaf that has really turned out well has a glow about it that means that each stage has been hit at the right moment.”
Rachel Scott's handmade pain au levain (sourdough) bread Photo: Rachel Scott
Scott says New Zealand-grown flour is “superb” for breadmaking.
“I absolutely encourage people to firstly support their local artists and craft bakers, but if they are baking themselves to support local grain growers and millers.
“A lot of wholefoods stores will stock, beautiful local grains. Baking needn't be extremely expensive because you can supplement or combine supermarket purchases with wholefoods stores. There are good high grade flours, just look for ones that are New Zealand-made in supermarkets, then you might supplement them with a mixture of grains and seeds that you get from a wholefoods store.”
“Another thing I really recommend is a plastic dough scraper, which is straight on one edge and round on the other. It can become a real extension of your hand for dealing with dough, because I think something that intimidates people if they haven't baked before is how sticky it is, it gets everywhere. I think they're about $2 or something, so that would be my my big investment for baking.”
Prior to the pandemic, Scott’s loaves were sold nationwide. Due to delivery issues, she now supplies restaurants in Christchurch, vineyard restaurants and Amberley retailers.
She’s resisted opportunities to expand because she wants to retain control over her loaves - and because she couldn’t imagine living anywhere else.
“I just I love this land. It's beautiful. I'm half an hour from an international airport, and five minutes from the sea and I can see the mountains and we've got the Waipara vineyards just on my doorstep and it's quite glorious, really. It’s a beautiful part of the country.”
