Mills work overtime to keep up with flour demand as home bakers rise to the occasion

Flour mills are working "around the clock" to meet demand as a rise in housebound Australians taking up baking has seen flour and other baking supplies fly off supermarket shelves.

Craig Neale and the team at Wholegrain Milling in Gunnedah, NSW, have seen wholesale demand increase four times. The artisan mill, which specialises in organic and sustainable flours and distributes across Australia and internationally, had "three weeks to react, basically".

Craig Neale of Wholegrain Milling in Gunnedah, NSW.Credit: Dominic Loneragan

"I don't have an answer to why it's happened," says Mr Neale, who is overseeing 21 production hours a day. "I've been in the industry for 45 years and I've never seen anything like this."

His wife owns a bakery; she recently sold 54 bags of wholesale flour in one day.

"It just proves that people must be learning to cook again because they’re not just buying enough flour to bake a cake; they’re buying five and 12kg bags of flour," Mr Neale says.

Wholesale flour sales have "more than taken up the loss off the downturn in flour to bakeries", he says.

Jason Cotter, the owner of Tuerong Farm on the Mornington Peninsula, is driving carloads of flour to the post office to mail to customers up and down the eastern seaboard, including a particularly eager street in Brisbane with multiple bakers unknown to each other.

Jason Cotter on the wheat harvester at Tuerong Farm in Victoria. Credit: Emma Hicks

"Everyone’s looking after a sourdough starter like it’s a 21st-century Tamagotchi," he says. "Initially, I thought we were just supplying regular orders but I've come to realise there's a bakestorm going on out there."

Everyone’s looking after a sourdough starter like it’s a 21st-century Tamagotchi.

Jason Cotter

The Tuerong team are currently working overtime to meet demand for their heritage, ancient and modern grains, with "a few more people working here than normal", he says. Larger mills are also increasing production to keep shelves and pantries full. Manildra Group is "continuing to operate our manufacturing facilities around the clock to meet demand", says managing director John Honan.

The flour section of Coles, Crows Nest, was empty on Sunday night (April 19), as baking supplies remained in high demand across the country. Credit: Riley Wilson

A Woolworths spokesperson says the rise in demand for flour has been partly because of panic buying but mostly because people are curious about baking at home. Stores have experienced "an unprecedented level of demand", with searches for muffins and cookie recipes on their website seeing a 90 per cent and 81 per cent increase respectively in the past six weeks. Searches for "bread" are up 38 per cent.

Prudence Jones buys her flour from Tuerong Farms. After "a hiatus of about five years", she finds herself baking bread again. This time, the Mornington Peninsula real estate agent and mother-of-two is spreading the love, tagging photographs with #communitysourdoughproject in an attempt to cultivate community among those baking during lockdown.

Ms Jones first stumbled across sourdough in the '90s while living on an American army base with her husband, pregnant with her first daughter. Loaves of bread are just the starter – if you will – for Ms Jones, who uses leftover levain to make croissants, pancakes, banana bread and croutons.

"The only thing about sourdough that you need is time, and I think that's why it's such a popular pastime at the moment because that's all people have," Ms Jones says.

Some of the ancient and heritage wheat varieties grown by Tuerong Farm.Credit: Jason Cotter

Under normal circumstances, Sydney's Berkelo bakeries offer workshops and classes on the art of sourdough. Those classes will soon return in virtual format. For now, Berkelo's shopfronts remain open, selling baking supplies in addition to takeaway coffee, baked goods and lunches.

"People are buying flour and yeast [too], rather than just coming in and buying a loaf of bread, so that they can have a go at home," says Matt Durrant, Berkelo's "artistic director of the bread division".

His tip is to be patient when baking; good bread comes with practice – if you can find the flour.

For those looking to dabble in bread-baking at home, Durrant has some tips:

• Start simple. While single origin, organic and sustainable flour is ideal, supermarket flours are a good starting point. "There is a difference in quality. The supermarket stuff can be a lot more reliable in some ways, but it's uniform," says Durrant. He recommends using high-quality flour, such as from Demeter Farm Mill, which produces a retail version of the flour Berkelo uses (which is from Wholegrain Milling).
• Practice a lot. "Get confident with the processes of making bread before you go crazy."
• Get as resilient as your dough. "If you're working with sourdough, then it's a really unpredictable thing, because it's alive, which is exciting, but sometimes you can end with a terrible product."
• Relish the journey. "The biggest thing for me is just to enjoy the process. Get the family involved." 

Looking for some good news?

We could all do with some good news right about now. That’s why we have launched The Good News Group, a Facebook group where we’ll share uplifting, inspiring and positive stories and invite members to do the same. Join the group here.