New member from New Zealand
Hello forum,
just wanted to say hello. We are two German immigrants living since over 10 years in New Zealand now. We live on our 100 acres farm and have milking goats, cows, sheep, chicken etc. We try to be as selfsufficient as possible. I run a small business selling cheese making equipment for the home cheese maker. But my main job is a software engineer and I work from home office. My wife is doing the farm work and I help on the weekend and in the evenings.
The range of bread in NZ isn't really great if you compare it with what we were used to in Germany. I am not complaining, it is a different place here and that's why we love living here. But some things we miss we try to make ourselves (I am also a passionate All Grain Brewer which really complements bread making). So we make our own bread since years now. Mainly sour dough which we start ourselves.We mill our own flour using organic wheat and rye whichis often difficult to get. New Zealand is a small place. Only 4 Mill people here.
I dream of building my own wood fired oven. We moved to our place 4 weeks ago so this is still on my list. Some of our friends built one and I am glad I could see what they would do different next time! ;-)
So far I am still overwhelmed with the amount of information on here. I am sure I will first spend a lot of time reading and might have one or the other question.
Cheers
Peter
Welcome, Peter!
I just joined myself, in fact I just posted my introduciton just moments ago. I have to say I am quite envious of your milking goats and sheep and cows. As I mentioned in my post, I am also a novice cheesemaker, a logical companion to bread. We live in the province of Madrid and near our house lives a goat-herd with his flock, I am tempted to make friends with him...
I am also impressed by the fact that you mill your own flour. Must be very gratifying to work with ingredients you have made yourself.
Anyway, I wanted to welcome you and wish you the best in your farm!
carlos
Ola Carlos,
thank you for your kind words. Yes it is a wonderful lifestyle we have here. A lot of people say "Why do you do all this work?" and we reply "It isn't work." Well of course it is but I guess you know what I mean. My problem at the moment is that I spend a lot of time working to earn money which I then spend on things I can't do myself because I spend too much time working earning money to buy things I could do myself if I would have more time. Hey I am quite proud of this sentence I just created. :-)
I was only once in Spain and unfortunately in an area which is full of Germans. I always wanted to see the real Spain but then in the end I never found the time to visit. A shame, I know but we have to do sacrifices inlife.
Sorry I digress, one of my vices.
Cheers
Peter
Goodmorning Peter
Welcome to TFL. Great to see a post from NZ, I live on Waiheke Is.
Using the search function I'm sure you'll find a lot of ideas in the extensive archives on this wonderful site for breads which suit your palate. Recently I visited the North Shore and purchased some bread at Diehl's Bakery, delicious but I thought 'I can do that'. So, over the winter I'm planning to undertake a rye bread project; for now I use small amount of rye flour and kibbled rye in a number of different loaves I make.
Best wishes with the WFO project - you'll find lots of useful information for that here and a friendly community who will do their best to answer specific questions too.
Robyn
Hello Robyn,
thank you for your reply. I have never been on Waiheke Island but I have lots of customers there with my cheese making business. One day I need to go there and must also visit the brewery on Waiheke Island. It is a bit difficult now having animals etc. You can't just stay somewhere overnight.
Yes I know Diehl, he came from Germany many years ago. His bread is ok. I have a friend, German as well (no, we do not have many German friends, only a handful) and he is a baker. Should you ever be in Newmarket, go to Zarbos and say hello to Olaf from me. He manages a bakery which is a concept of Dean Brettschneider (he was one of the two judges on TV with NZ's hottest baker, which was a disaster if you ask me;-) ). Olaf works with Dean and their bread is probably the best you can get in NZ. Sorry I hope I didn't do too much advertising now. I also wanted to add this to the bread map on this site. Along with the Matakana bakery which is second best in NZ I'd say!
Sorry for all Non-Kiwis, I didn't want to bore you!
Cheers
Peter
Kia Ora Peter. This is a wonderful site with lots of useful hands-on information. It has some very skilled and knowledgeable bakers who are willing to give good constructive advice. I like that it has bakers from all over the world. Where abouts in NZ are you? I'm up in the Kaipara district up North. I know what you mean about NZ bread. Even Vogel's now tastes like glue since being taken over by one of the mainstream bakeries. I find that many of the supposed "artisan" bakeries sell bread which looks good but tastes like nothing. I try to keep my baking simple and mostly just bake with my sourdough bug, just using 3 or 4 different recipes & attempting to perfect them. It's hard trying to work out which variable it is that needs modifying. I agree that the Matakana bakery bakes really good bread. Their cakes are pretty good too! I watched Dean Brettschneider on that baking programme and have two of his baking books. Next time I'm in Newmarket I'll make sure I visit Zarbos. Do you know of anywhere in NZ where I can buy rye berries? And do you have a website for your cheese making equipment? Kia ora to your wife too, regards from Liz
Hello Liz,
thank you for your reply. We lived between Wellsford, Te Hana and Port Albert until we moved to Kaitaia 4 weeks ago. I love the Kaipara and went fishing there leaving from Port Albert.
To be honest I found the NZ Hottest Baker show pretty lame. It would have been a brilliant concept but they didn't make anything out of it. Anyway....
What do you mean with rye berries? Sorry might be a language problem. If you mean whole Rye corn for milling we buy ours at NZ Bio Grain (go to http://theshop.co.nz/ and click on the Grains, Flours, Pulses and Nuts building) but you need to be quick because they are often sold out. We usually buy our years supply after the harvest.
I am not sure if I am allowed to mention my web page here but if you google my user name CottageCrafts in New Zealand you will find our web page. My business name is the same as my username.
I hope this is of some help to you.
Cheers
Peter
P.S: Just found out I can enter a web page in my profile. I just updated it with my web page address.
Well, we were almost neighbours! We live close to the Atiu Creek park and we often go down to the Port Albert wharf to take our dog for a swim. If we'd known that we could've met for a picnic and shared our sourdough breads and home brew! Thanks for those links. I've been looking for whole rye grains with the berries intact - I'll give Bio Grains a go. I've found your on-line shop as well thanks, and see that your cheese is sold at the Kaiwaka shop. I know this is meant to be a bread forum, but just one question about cheese - what style of cheese would be a good one to begin with for someone who's never made cheese before? Kaitaia should be nice and warm in the winter and you've got those beautiful beaches up there. I hope you get some rain over the next couple of days, Kia ora from Liz
Welcome,
Pleased you have made contact.............
Maybe you could post some lovely German bread recipes for us all to share.
Pete from Australia.