For chef Kimmy Gastmeier, baking is like magic. “When I learned to do bread, sourdough and wood-firing, I had that ‘aha’ moment – like, oh my god, this is it,” she says. “Having that living fermentation in my hands, all the work that went into the dough and bringing it together with fire, the alchemy of those things coming together… I wanted to follow that.”
From that initial spark came the idea for Cherry Moon, a neighbourhood bakery and cafe centred around a custom-built woodfired oven (“I tracked down a 75-year-old man who knew how to build a special type of oven, and got an old Scotch oven facade from 1869 off of Gumtree,” Gastmeier says). Pair that with hyperlocal produce – the fig leaves used in her signature sourdough loaf are sourced from just one suburb away – and a menu designed to inspire a sense of nostalgia, and you have another form of alchemy.
“When I was dreaming up my shop, I kept coming back to what my grandma used to make,” Gastmeier says. “I had all these recipes already in the vault. Then there’s a nostalgic element – the doughnuts we would get when we were kids, or the fairy biscuits. Everything that we do here has touched my heart at some time in my life.”
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BURNT SALTED BUTTER & DARK CHOC COOKIES
MAKES 22
Begin this recipe a day
