Small World Bakery among the South Australian winners in the 2020 delicious. Produce Awards
An SA bakery and a chef who made carp “sexy” on menus are among the South Australian winners in the 2020 delicious. Produce Awards
Food & Wine
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A Langhorne Creek bakery has been nationally recognised for its work in resurrecting ancient grains and techniques, to make bread special again.
Small World Bakery, run by Emily Salkeld and Chris Duffy, is today revealed as Outstanding Artisan in this year’s delicious. Harvey Norman Produce Awards, which celebrates the country’s best ingredients and producers.
Kane Pollard, who is heading the soon-to-open SkyCity drawcard restaurant, Sol, has been named Unearthed Next-Gen Chef, while Prue Henschke, of Henschke Wines in Barossa Valley, has been awarded Outstanding Viticulturalist.
The Produce Awards is the country’s most prestigious food industry campaign, for which producers do not pay to enter. Rather, producers are nominated and ingredients tasted by industry heavy-hitters including Maggie Beer, Matt Moran, Alla Wolf-Tasker and Neil Perry.
The Outstanding Artisan award came as a “huge surprise” to Salkeld.
“We’re actually trying to make fundamental changes to a small part of our food scene, so this helps us keep going,” she said. This year, Small World Bakery has not only continued its work in “closing the loop” on its grain-to-table approach, but also worked with local farmers to help diversity their offering. Salkeld and Duffy have experimented with old strains including spelt, emmer, einkorn and Khorasan, a wheat which is closely related to durum but, like the others, had been bred out of large-scale commodity farming.
Their current harvest is Federation wheat – the first commercially-released Australian variety, from 1901. “It was developed by William Farrer, who was on the old $2 note,” Salkeld adds.
Kane Pollard was awarded for his sustainable ethos in the kitchen. At his family’s restaurant Topiary, where he was head chef before moving to Sol, he worked to get ingredients such as carp on South Australian menus.
“We turned it into a croquette to make it approachable and would send it unannounced as a snack on the menu – it ended up being the favourite snack of them all,” he said.
“I’m always searching in general for the most sustainable meats. A lot of it comes down to education – the more we know about it, the more we can build that story and educate the customer, so not only are they willing to try it, but they’re excited to try it.”
Maggie Beer also praised the high number of South Australian medallists, such as Ngeringa Biodynamic Salad Greens (‘From the Earth’), Goolwa Pipis (‘Sea’), Dairyman Barossa (‘Dairy’) and Mayura Station (‘Paddock’).
“I’m very proud of South Australia and proud of every producer, and we need to support them now more than ever,” Beer said. “The best of Australia sits with the best of world.”
The full list of award winners and medallists are revealed in the November issue of delicious., which is on sale now. Winners will also be celebrated at a virtual event on Monday night, which is free to join – register at delicious.com.au/allstardinner