I was surprised to learn that it has been four or five years since I last spoke to Gabriel Alonso at Juliet Melbourne. Time certainly flies when you're having fun. I loved talking to Gabs back then and hearing about his love for hospitality and it was so lovely to be able to talk to him again. Gabs has done the 2020 'pivot', but still speaks with absolute passion about what he is doing, which is baking bread from a micro-bakery in Preston. When I visited, the whole family was there and I felt very welcomed. Back Alley Bakes make bread, and currently hot cross buns, to order and Gabs was sorry he didn't have a loaf to give me. But he did give me a bag of tomatoes from his garden and some beautiful thoughts about baking bread, embracing change and living life the way you want to.
Nice to see you again, Gabriel. How much longer were you at Juliet after we spoke?
I stayed until Christmas 2017, I think, or the beginning of 2018. Then I decided to get out of the kitchen and went into food service for a while. I was working in a farmer-owned beef company, repping for them as well as processing. That was for a year and then I went over to Ocean Made Seafood and I was there for 18 months as their Operations Manager, running all the day-to-day, which was a great experience, but chaotic. It was a full on 18 months of work. And then Covid hit.
So then bread. Everyone baked bread in Covid and many chefs put up photos of loaves cut in half showing the crumb. What is it about bread? You obviously have a real passion for bread, and I read that you spent some time with James Fisher at Cannibal Creek Bakehouse, so what was your journey with bread?
Back at Juliet when we started, I met JamesGiselle (Saffigna) the head chef at Punch Lane and I did a one day Master Class with him. We got to know each other, and I got really passionate about bread then and started using his product in the restaurant and I became obsessed with bread. It became my thing downstairs; I was making bread all the time, experimenting. Once I moved away from Punch Lane, I still made bread at home sporadically and then I got too busy for it, but once Covid hit and I got back into it and realised how much I was enjoying it, I realised it was what I loved. I've tried everything else. A couple of months into doing nothing, I said to my wife, Alana, why don't we just give it a crack? We started putting a couple of loaves out there, found our oven and it just started that way. That's it. It was a spur of the moment thing and if we weren't going to do it then, we were never going to do it. We would have just gone back to working somewhere.
That's amazing. You're in control of it and you are doing it as a family.
Exactly. Alana does all of the media stuff. She manages across the board all of the stuff I'm not that great at. I'm good at making bread. What she does helps propel what we do, because without the social media, youre not present.
That's right. You have to have a narrative, don't you?
That's right. We only deliver.
So it's a make to order business.
Yes. We bake three days a week and there is a cut-off period two days prior to that.
How many loaves are you baking? I see you're also doing hot cross buns. I could smell the delicious orangey smell when I came in.
Yes, they're a big favourite at the moment. Today I've done 55 loaves plus 36 packs of hot cross buns.
It’s not work. I said that to someone the other day. It’s that real cliche thing that if you do what you love, you’re not working. I can do it all day every day, which I am doing at the moment.
What's special about your loaves? What are you looking for in a good loaf?
Not the loaf, necessarily, but the quality of what we are putting into it. For the most part, a lot of processes are similar; how people utilise sour dough is very similar. But the quality of what we put into it is what changes it. The machinery I use as well. I have an old fork mixer and they are as rare as hens' teeth, but they are beautiful with the dough; really gentle. It mimics the motions of our hands. You never get a better loaf than the one you mix with your hands, but when you are doing 20 to 30 kilos, it's just not physically possible. With our mixer being so delicate, it really adds to the quality of what we do. It doesn't heat up the dough too much. It doesn't start breaking apart those bonds you want to create.
How long do you prove the dough for?
We bulk prove for 4 hours and then we proof retard overnight. So, after four hours, I shape them all, then they go in the fridge overnight until the next morning at) to 1 degree, so really cold. They cold ferment and then bang, into the oven from cold.
Where do you get your flour from?
Still from James. His company now is Rock Paper Flour based out of the Dandenongs. He is still milling out there and he uses a few suppliers but his main one is Burrum Biodynamics. We like partnering with those guys, they're good.
And the hot cross buns? Did I read you are using a whole orange in every 6 pack?
There's orange peel in there, whole oranges, a mix of stuff in there to make lots of flavour and goodness, along with quality flour and good fruit. You can't skimp on a good bun.
It smells so good. When you experiment and you were saying you had a process of trying out different things, what are the variables? What are you trying out?
Things like hydration. Every flour is different. With the flour we use, if you are going too far with too much water in the mix, you won't get a good result. But you always want to push the boundary with how far you can go to get a really moist loaf with a really nice open crumb. But if you go too far down that spectrum, you end up with something that's flat and dense because the wheat can't hold that much water.
I was telling someone about how you have switched from being a chef to a baker and they made the point that you have switched late nights for early mornings. Do you have early mornings now?
Definitely. Having worked at Ocean Made and being in seafood, I got used to that. You're up at 3 or 4 in the morning. I dont know whether 'used to it' is the right word. You never get used to it, especially being a chef. My mind and my body are more active at 10 or 11 at night and then I end up staying up later and not getting much sleep. Tomorrow I'll get up around 3am to get everything cooked and ready.
Wow.
Yeah, but when it's your own, you don't mind. Some days are harder than others, especially if you've had a late one the night before
Are they domestic customers or cafes?
Predominantly domestic customers. A lot of people are online for home. We have a friend of ours at Va Penne in Northcote; Mario, and we have been doing some bread for him and we have partnered up with a co-op called the Wholefoods Unwrapped Collective, which is great because they want zero to minimal packaging and that was their whole ethoswe still want good food and good quality product but wanted to reduce the amount of packaging. They tried our bread and approached us, and we have a really good relationship with them now. Our bread comes in a paper bag, so it's compostable or recyclable. And with our wholesale customers, we just arrive with a big tray of bread as it is, because they are going to use it straightaway.
Going forward, obviously the hot cross buns are seasonal. Are you always going to have the bread and something else or are you going to do different kinds of bread?
We are always experimenting with different types of bread. We will move into a different bun down the line. I'm enjoying buns, I really like those, so I already have my next special in mind. We will do a few different things. Initially we thought we'd do pastry and different things, but to fit a pastry sheeter into the spaceso for now we are sticking to one thing and doing it well and having things like the buns in between that. Once we get a space up and running, we want to have a dedicated pastry kitchen as well as the bakery and find some good chefs who want to come for the ride and make it happen that way.
Alana is so good with your Instagram, and Alana, I was saying to Gabs how important it is to tell the story of your business and looking at your posts, it seems as though you both get so much joy out of this 'pivot' and that really comes through. Gabs, it seems as though you just really love making bread. It must be immensely satisfying.
It's not work. I said that to someone the other day. It's that real cliche thing that if you do what you love, you're not working. I can do it all day every day, which I am doing at the moment.
Alana: I think we were in a bit of a yucky place too to be honest, when we started. It was Covid lockdown and both of us were hospo and neither of us could work and we were at home with our kidsit sucked, and it was a bit scary at first. We had always talked together about doing our own thing but had never been able to stick to one idea. Then Gabs had a lot more time and was doing a lot of baking and we thought maybe we could try this. It was a really nice little focus, a project, something for us to put our energy into.
And I guess it was word of mouth at first?
Alana: Yes. We have a beautiful community here. Gabs gave out bread to the whole neighbourhood, because he was baking so much so he would just go around the street and give everyone bread because we had too much. Then we got some feedback and everyone said we should sell it and it was awesome.
Gabs: It came out of boredom, really. I did all the garden out there and then thought, right, whats next?