Yallingup Woodfired Bread: Why I Don't Leave It Until Saturday Lunchtime

The bread sells out before 9am most Saturdays. I've learned not to leave it until after the market.

That's the whole post in one line, but I'll do you the courtesy of expanding it. If you're spending a weekend in Yallingup and you want to take the best loaf in the South West home with you, here's how to do it.

Photo: David Stanley, CC BY 2.0 · via Wikimedia Commons

A wood-fired sourdough operation in Yallingup that bakes once or twice a week, on a Friday and a Saturday morning depending on the season. The bread is the proper thing: long ferment, dark crust, deep blistered skin, the inside soft enough to hold its shape but with the open structure you get from a long retard in the cold.

I'm not going to name names because the operation shifts a bit year on year. Some seasons it's the bakery in the village, some seasons it's a stall that travels to the Margaret River Farmers Market and the local pop-ups, sometimes there's a side hustle running out of a back paddock down Caves Rd. If you ask any local in Yallingup on a Saturday morning, they'll point you at the current spot. The bread, however, has been roughly the same hand for the last decade.

Pamela has been buying it for as long as I can remember. The loaf goes on the bench at home, gets sliced into mid-morning toast, and the last of it ends up in a soup on Sunday night. A good loaf has the run of three meals.

If they have a country loaf, get the country loaf. It's the workhorse. Big round, mixed flours, generous crust. Slices thick, toasts beautifully, lasts four days if you store it cut-side-down on a board.

The other things worth getting:

• The rye, if it's on. Heavier, darker, denser. Cheese-and-relish bread. A small loaf goes a long way.
• The fruit loaf at Easter, if you can get one. Sliced thin, toasted, butter. Better than anything you've had with a coffee in a city.
• Olive oil rolls, if they've made them. Lunch on the beach with a wedge of cheese and a tomato. That's a meal.

What I'd skip: the very white refined loaves, when there's a good country sourdough sitting next to them. Not because they're bad. They're just not what this operation is best at.

This is the actual point of the post. Most visitors think they'll grab bread when they're already at the market or already in the village for lunch. They won't get any.

The reliable plan:

• Friday afternoon, 4 to 5pm, if there's a Friday bake. Less crowded. Better selection. Worth ringing ahead.
• Saturday morning, 7:30 to 8:30am. Be there when the doors open. By 9am the country loaves are gone.
• Don't even bother trying after 10am on a Saturday. Go and look at the rest of the Yallingup village instead, and come back next week.

The reason it sells fast is partly that it's good and partly that the locals are organised. We've been doing this for years. Our Saturday morning loops include a bread pickup as the first stop because we know what happens if we leave it.

A good loaf has the run of three meals.

The local Saturday morning, as it actually runs:

• 6:30am. Surf check, paddle if conditions are right.
• 7:45am. Bread pickup.
• 8:00am. Yallingup Bakery coffee, or the espresso van at the carpark, depending on the season.
• 9:00am. Margaret River Farmers Market for the rest of the week's vegetables, eggs, milk.
• 10:30am. Home, sliced bread on the bench, leftover bread already disappearing.
• 11:00am. Open the gallery.

If you compress that into a visitor's morning, you'd swap the gallery for an extra beach swim, and you'd still be back at the accommodation by lunchtime with a loaf that'll see you through the weekend.

Photo: David Stanley, CC BY 2.0 · via Wikimedia Commons

A good loaf doesn't need much. The temptation to over-complicate is real, especially in a holiday kitchen with a single sharp knife and an unfamiliar pan. Resist it.

The four things I'd do with a Saturday loaf in a holiday house:

• Toast for breakfast. Salted butter, honey from the market if you got any, or vegemite for the locals. Coffee.
• Picnic at the beach. Tear it. Don't bother slicing. A cheese, a tomato, a knife. You're done. Smiths or the Yallingup lagoon both work.
• An evening soup. Tear the last of it into a hot bowl. The crust absorbs slowly. You'll thank me.
• Toast the heel with cheese on top under the grill for ten minutes. It's a Sunday afternoon meal that nobody photographs but everyone eats.

There's no rule against making more of it than that. But the bread is good enough to carry a meal on its own, and most of the time the simplest treatment is the right one.

the Yallingup eating itinerary for what to put around it.

This post is short on purpose. The bread doesn't need a 2000-word essay. It needs you to be there before 9 on Saturday morning. That's almost the entire content.

If you've got one weekend in Yallingup and you can do one local thing that the visitors mostly miss, this is one of them. The loaf is on the kitchen bench by 9am and the day starts properly.

The gallery on Blythe Rd is two minutes from the bakery. Wood fire in winter, viewing window into the workshop year-round. Open seven days, ten to five. Google Maps sometimes misdirects via Wildwood Rd — stay on Bussell Hwy, turn at the Carbunup store, then Blythe Rd.