Hi, I'm Warwick Quinton. I'm the Saldo Baker and this is my shop. Today we're in the Hunter
Street Mall. Today we're supposed to be the Olive Tree Market which is in Civic Park.
They've had a bit of bad luck with that market. The weather's been less than kind and it
was predicted that today would be very very very gale force windy sort of day.
Well they've cancelled the market sometime after we've set up. I don't think there's been a
precedent for this. This is the first time this has happened. So I'm here in Hunter Street Mall
which is where I am most Fridays anyway. I've been in production from Tuesday or actually from
Monday and I got a phone call at about 8.30 last night explaining that the market had been
cancelled. I can't turn around and go back. I've got 300 loaves of bread to sell.
When you're making a loaf of bread it goes through I think maybe four or five kind of major
transformations from start to finish and every time no matter what and you know for 25 years I've
been doing this it's a bit of a new arm moment. Every time you see a successful loaf come out
of the oven it still makes your heart beat a little bit quicker.
Look at that. Oh it's insane.
I became a Saldo Baker probably by accident. I had a girlfriend way back in the day
probably 30 years ago and she used to get sick whenever she'd eat almost anything with yeast
in it. So she set me the task of making her bread that she could eat and she loved bread.
I guess it took me about six months to get anything that was palatable but from that point
forth it became an addiction or an obsession. My bakery is in the Wadigan Hills a most picturesque
location deep in the bush surrounded by bellbirds and rainforests. It's pretty nice.
Like a lot of things I fell into being a busker when I was probably in my late teens maybe early
twenties. It seemed to me to be a good job because you didn't have to do much work and
you got paid quite well. I reckon I was doing alright but I'll take the speaking.
For most people it's all about making a living and feeding the family and the kids and paying
the mortgage and doing all that sort of stuff. And to a certain extent it is for me as well
but it's something deeper. It's that connection with your customers. It's a connection with
their lives. It's the connection they have to your bread and the connection they have
to your story. It moves from being a commodity or a consumable to something that's primal
in your life.
Last night was what I would call a pretty good bake. I packed down and then my off-sider
Sarah drives this shop with all the bread in it here and she sets up in the morning
and then I come in a little bit later and help her to operate the shop.
I'm not a baker at all. I'm studying drama. I went to primary school with Warwick's youngest
daughter so I've grown up around Warwick's bread eating it when I was younger. And then
when I needed a cafe job once I was in high school I came to Woz and I've been working
for him ever since.
I feel as though I've got everything down to the absolute leanest and meanest that I
can. It has come about in that process of reflecting on something over a couple of decades
and going hmm don't like all these big electricity bills. I wonder if there's a way around that
and so on. So I feel as though this bakery has answered a great deal of those questions
and with a bit of luck I'll be able to answer a few more before I'm finished.
