Organic stoneground loaves of The People's Bread, made by a Wanaka family, have been a sellout every week at the Wanaka Farmers Market since February and are now delivered fresh from the family's mobile kitchen. Catherine Pattison meets the bakers.
Ruth Heath apologises profusely for selling out of bread the morning of our interview.
It is a positive problem for the Albert Town-based baker, who along with husband, Jeremy (37) juggles bringing organic stone-ground sourdough loaves to the people with bringing up their four children, Timo, Caoimhe, Lennox and Ezra.
The Heaths now deliver around Wanaka and Lake Hawea three times a week.
The ingredient list could not be simpler. Organic wheat, rye and spelt grains - delivered personally by the grower, then stone-ground by the Heaths - Wanaka spring water and unrefined sea salt.
''It's the best quality bread that you can make. Milling the flour means it is so fresh and full of its own nutrients,'' Mrs Heath (32) explains.
The weekly production of the 60-plus 1.3kg ''superloaves'', plus the ciabatta and sticky buns she sells at the Thursday market, is not so simple.
Like many working parents, the Heaths go for the shifts option.
In the evenings, one will be out in the mobile kitchen making the dough, while the other takes care of four times dinner, bath, books and bed.
After up to 24 hours proving, the bread is ready for baking. Again, one parent is ''in the trailer'' and the other is on breakfast, school lunches, drop-offs.
In theory it runs smoothly but the reality of working from home means is there is no separation between being a parent and being a baker, Mrs Heath says.
''It's really important to be well organised.''
However, if ingredients run low, she might have to bundle all four kids into the car and make a mad dash to pick some up. You could say she is used to it, after starting out The People's Bread this way.
With her husband working out of town, she would trundle across town once a week at night to a borrowed kitchen to make the doughs, back again in the morning with pyjama-clad children to attend to the doughs and then take a third trip later to bake them.
Mr Heath had been employed as a pharmacist in Wanaka but the couple wanted to find a way to make a living that fitted in around their family.
They had always made ''nutritious and delicious'' bread for themselves and figured others would enjoy it too.
''Especially seeing there is a total lack of real food in general in the commercial food market,'' Mrs Heath said.
So in April they purchased a mobile commercial kitchen, set up a Facebook page and a website for customers to order deliveries online and waited for the proof of the bread to be in the tasting.
The People's Bread is now sold in two Wanaka outlets; it is taken over to Queenstown by an organic food business and is delivered still warm from the oven to their regular customers' homes.
Mr Heath now works part-time landscaping, although the couple are moving towards the point where the bread will produce a sustainable income, allowing both of them to be at home baking.
It is about supporting themselves long-term and modelling to their children that they are able to create something commercially viable.
Mrs Heath is under no illusions about it being a cushy career.
''There's a lot of hard work involved.''
The lengthy proving process makes producing last-minute order requests a metabolic impossibility. The whole food beauty of The People's Bread is that long fermentation, Mrs Heath says.
''It makes the grain's minerals and vitamins bio-available and easy to digest. The process brings out the natural taste and sweetness of the grains.''
Gluten is also broken down, adding to digestibility.
''We have people who have gluten sensitivities who buy our bread regularly because they have no side effects from it,'' Mrs Heath says.
Our interview concludes with toast all round finished. Then the off-to-school shift begins for Mr Heath and the get-bread-organised stint starts for his wife.
She likes a phrase a fellow Wanaka Farmers Market stallholder imparted after watching her painfully selling loaves, with 1-year-old Ezra gleefully pulling her hair from his backpack perch.
''You are mad if you do or silly if you don't,'' he told her.
''I think we are qualified as mad,'' she jokes, with a tired but happy smile.
