Baking soon: Everyday Bread coming to Hamilton Hill with pastries, coffee and sandwiches

From the outside, it seemed as if Everyday Bread emerged from nowhere – an overnight success with a sudden onslaught of feverish whispers about a couple of guys baking afternoon loaves in Willagee.

Talking to Tom Radford (below, left) and Zach Flemming (below, right) on a hot summer’s morning at the bakery, the truth is a little less glamorous – although the loaves are well worth lining up for.

“Zach and I worked together for a couple of years. Zach, has been a baker for… 15 years?”

“Nearly 18 years,” Zach clarifies, after a moment of mental arithmetic. 

“Zach was in charge of the bakery that we were working at at the time, while I was managing the front of house section, so we had quite a lot to do together. And eventually when our time ended there, we were sweet to pull something together and do it for ourselves.”

“We scraped together all our money,” Zach explains, “Saved up, and we were looking at opening a retail site, north of the river… And then we saw this place.”

“We were a bit hesitant to come down and look at it, like… It’s a shithole!”

“We thought, ‘We’ll never be able to do anything out of here.’ But we opened it up, we had a look, scraped together a whole bunch of second hand equipment, baked some bread, and then just went out to a few good cafes and restaurants and handed out samples, waited to hear back from the people.”

At first, they “didn’t hear a whole lot back” – but slowly the pair gained wholesale traction as they baked in the late afternoon and early evening.

“Some dude walked past and asked what was going on, and we were in here eating sandwiches, and talking about the bread. And then someone else came by, asked if he could buy a loaf of bread, so we sold him a baguette! Then Tom thought, ‘Well, maybe we’ll try and see if we can sell a few loaves while we’re down here baking the bread for wholesale.’”

The odd person walking past became a line winding down the footpath, a homemade bookshelf became an actual shop counter, their wholesale client list grew, and the cult status of Everyday Bread was established.

“There was obviously a bit of a demand for other products, but we weren’t able to do that – we simply don’t have the space, or the electricity down here! We’ve been a bit frustrated because we know it’s the missing piece to the puzzle of the bakery.”

Since then, they’ve been quietly keeping an eye out for a location more suited to both retail operations and an expanded offering that includes viennoiserie, sandwiches and coffee – finally finding a space in Hamilton Hill that’s set to open post-Easter.

“We’ve had our ambitions from the start that included a wider scope of what we’re doing now,” says Tom.

“And it’s our chance to step up and do what we think we’re capable of.”

“It’s a little bit further south than from here, but down there will give us the space to be able to produce viennoiserie, pastries, coffee, sandwiches, make more bread, bake bread throughout the day, serve pastries throughout the day, and then still cater to the afternoon trade of bread,” Zach explains.

“This is our, like, blessed little shithole. And down there, will be a bit more refined, more visually appealing on the eye – not to say that this place doesn’t have character and charm!”

“Good coffee, sandwiches – interesting things. I think really focus on viennoiserie. But I don’t know… Kind of like freaky things, you know? Thinking about, what’s a Greek pastry? What sort of pastries do they eat in Croatia? What sort of pastries are people eating in Korea?”

“We want to keep up the afternoon bread trade because we really stand behind that and believe in that. It’s changing the narrative, particularly here in Australia that ‘You must go to the bakery and get a load of bread between 6 and 2pm’, and then after that it’s game over, and you’ve got to settle for sub par bread, sub par product.”

“As for this site here, we’re not too sure what we’re going to do here afterwards, it’s a good location – the other day we were thinking that perhaps we might put a mill in here and start milling our own grains.”

“We’re just trying to keep it real and, you know, inspire people to… Maybe inspire isn’t the right word, but just to be nice, to keep it real.”

“And making it accessible for everyone – that’s a big thing that Tom and I have focused on, making it for everyone. We don’t feel like we’re overpricing our product. Serving it with a smile, and it’s coming from a place of intent without compromise. It’s honouring time and technique.”

Intent without compromise feels apt: Zach is laser-focused and adamant when it comes to the product and their ethos, and doesn’t give an inch when the conversation strays towards topics he’s not interested in discussing.

“I think it’s just old school, country values in a way. Tom and I were brought up pretty like, what would you say? With good, honest morals. Not city morals!”

“Not city slickers!” Tom laughs.

“That’s a big part of my makeup and my identity, I guess,” Zach continues. “Coming from the country, living in the city and going back to the country. Just acknowledging people, and standing up to bullshit as well – I think a lot of people in this day and age are just too scared to stand up and say something when they see something wrong go down.”

“Baking in general, particularly bread, that’ll humble you – because you’re working with something that’s alive, you’re working with the variables, patterns and collecting data to try to make the best bread that we can. But ultimately, the dough, the unbaked loaves of bread dictate how we work.”

Everyday Bread’s new bakery is scheduled to open in early April, and will be located at 7/8 Simms Road, Hamilton Hill.