Wild Wheat

Wild Wheat began in 1999 as a wholesale operation out of a small factory in East Tamaki, Auckland, supplying bread to the city's restaurants and cafes before it ever had a retail counter of its own. Founder Andrew, who trained as a chef at AUT after leaving school at sixteen and later worked at London's Le Pont de la Tour, describes his approach in blunt terms: "I believe in simplicity with food: be honest and cook with integrity." It was during that London stint, in a brief spell covering the restaurant's bakery, that he found the trade he'd stay in.

The bakery's sourdough runs on an apple-based starter now more than twenty years old, fed and maintained daily, with loaves taking upward of 48 hours from mix to bake — six to eight hours of bulk fermentation, shaping, then a full 24 hours of cold retardation to break down starches and sugars before baking. Wild Wheat states its dough uses only flour, water, and salt, with most loaves free of additives and suitable for a vegan diet, the same minimal-ingredient discipline that defines the current wave of serious New Zealand and Australian sourdough houses.

The wholesale reputation built through the early 2000s translated into recognition once the bakery opened its first retail shop in Mt Eden in mid-2004: Best Hot Cross Buns in the North Island in 2004, 2005, and 2010, Metro Magazine's Best Bread through 2004–2010 and Best Bakery in 2011, an NZ Food Award for its Kumara sourdough in 2012, and a win at the Farmers Mill Great NZ Bread Bake Off in 2016. The bakery now supplies stockists across Auckland and wider New Zealand alongside its retail counters.