Sonoma Bakery is coming to Canberra! 

Posted on 26 July, 2018

Stop the presses bread nerds! Sonoma Bakery is coming to Canberra!

And now we have a grand opening date of August 13!

Yes, the famed Sydney Bakery is filling a loaf-shaped hole in our hearts where Autolyse used to be – taking over the former Autolyse shopfront on Lonsdale Street, Braddon.

The newest kid on the Canberra bread scene, Sonoma has been providing naturally leavened sourdough bread to Sydney’s best restaurants—including Quay, Aria, Tetsuya’s and Bennelong—for more than 20 years. This is their first location outside of Sydney. Chief Baker Stefan Pischke is European-trained and has been working for the Sonoma team in Sydney preparing for the Canberra launch.

Sonoma will bring its incredible range of artisan sourdoughs to the capital including its signature loaf—the Sonoma Miche—which is characterised by a distinct smokey flavour with a dark caramelised and blistered crust and an open and chewy crumb.

The bakery has a wonderful back-story, having been started on the taste of nostalgia and a whim. Truck driver Kerry Connole had strong childhood memories of the aroma of fresh bread from a wood-fired bakery from the NSW country town of Bellata. Decades later, he came across the then derelict bakery and enlisted his two sons, Andrew and Christian, to lovingly restore it and fire up the ovens.

The fact that none of them had ever baked bread before was a mere detail.  It was the late 1990s, and not to do things by halves, Andrew headed off to San Francisco to learn all he could about the art of sourdough. He was inspired by the Northern Californian-style of baking naturally fermented sourdough bread, directly on the hearth of a wood-fired oven. The Californian city of Sonoma stuck as a name and Andrew returned with a jar of leaven, the live natural yeast that’s the cornerstone of a Sonoma loaf to this day.

Every loaf of Sonoma sourdough contains freshly-milled sustainable flour, filtered water, sourdough starter and sea salt.

The Braddon store has brought much excitement to our carbohydrate-loving hearts. And now, only a few weeks to go!

You can keep up to date on the August 13 opening by checking out their Facebook page.

the essentials:
Sonoma Braddon
21 Lonsdale Street Braddon
Opening August 13.