The sourdough ($11/loaf) at Reverence Sourdough is excellent. Lucky, as I drove nearly eighty kilometres out of my way to Gunnedah to get my hands on some, after eating it for breakfast at The Workshop in the Tamworth Powerhouse. Greeted at the counter by proprietor and baker, Renee Neale, an important piece of the sourdough puzzle fell into place. You see I only love the bread from three sourdough bakers: Penny Fours, Iggy’s and Honorbread, and when I said as much, the counter-hand smiled and said: “They all buy their flour from us.” Ditto my beloved Silver Creek sourdough crumpets, I’m told. So Wholegrain Milling Co flours are the link: a family-owned business run by Renee and her husband Craig Neale producing certified organic and sustainable flours that are locally milled in Gunnedah. Here they’re hand-moulded and fermented for more than 24-hours, and they sold as fast as Renee can bake them (our loaves were still warm).
This morning I teamed it on a breakfast plate with some other wonderful products from the Liverpool Plains region. These were smoked lemon and dill rainbow trout from Arc-en-Ciel trout farm in Hanging Rock, and scrambled eggs made using eggs from The Henn House in Breeza. The Henn House produce eggs from hens with a ratio of 40 hens per hectare: far below the recommended 1500 hens per hectare for free-range eggs. You sure can taste the difference: try them closer to town by visiting Newcastle City Farmers Market.
However if you do find yourself in Gunnedah, the Gunnedah Country Markets are the place to be if you can time your visit to the third Saturday of any month. Cheap vegetables and an excellent range of sauces and pickles had us loading up our ice boxes. The star find was Almost Home Gunnedah, who make a cracking corn relish ($8) that stands in stark opposition to the “four kernels of corn” you find in the commercial supermarket variety, the proprietor informed me. This jar, made using corn grown on his property, Dixie, gives you a lot more sweet, juicy bursts of corn than that against a tangy vinegar-heavy base. Mix it with some sour cream or cottage cheese for a perfect two-minute dip. Smeared over corn beef, the green tomato pickle ($8) they make is equally enticing.
And while we’re chatting about the bounty of the Liverpool Plains, which includes beef producers like Jack’s Creek Beef and my preference, Colly Creek Beef sold at the Hanna Pastoral Co. in Willow Tree, this food bowl is under threat from Santos who want to do coal seam gas mining. The Angus beef and the Gunnedah flour are both of such high quality they warrant us all taking action with the NSW Minister for Environment Penny Sharpe MLC. We need to protect our food supply at all costs.
