Jo Zdybel, founder, owner and baker of Pennyroyal Bush Breads, sits in her home kitchen among the gum trees in the heart of Otway forest with a perfect view of the Deans March ridge. Passionate about baking, local produce, and seasonal foods, Jo, her husband Danny and family, have lived in this beautiful aerie since 2000, when they made the move from Lorne, where Jo had worked firstly in hospitality at the well known Erskine House and later in a restaurant she ran with Danny.
“Hospitality is always hard work, but we also had three children, aged 8 months, 5 years and 10 years, and it began to really suck the life out of me,” she says. Perhaps this experience explains Jo’s determination to keep Pennyroyal Bush Breads small, focussed and personal.
For a long time Jo baked her bread in this small and perfectly formed kitchen the bush. If there were an award for the bakery with the worlds most perfect view, then Pennyroyal Bush Breads home bakery should surely take the prize. Jo tells me that they , “… bought the house when it was at lock-up stage, finished it and added the balconies”, balconies which put you at about eye-level with birds sitting in branches midway up the magnificent surrounding gums.
Jo says that their life here has always been about kids, food and being close to nature. She loves the Deans Marsh community, which she describes as “amazing”: one which has an ever changing diversity of demographics and one where everyone joins in.
“The cricket team, for example has an age range of around 15 to 70 years. It’s great, mixing all ages. It really teaches the kids respect.”
Especially while her children were growing Jo’s baking revolved around her family, providing school lunchboxes and family meals. Now that her children are older, her passion for baking is more for the benefit of her many satisfied and enthusiastic customers. She no longer bakes for the the farmers’ markets that she attended for years but is now firmly based much closer to home and has her own little corner bakery in the Deans Marsh General Store, more recently known as The Store.
Jo’s passion for baking has now extended into giving a monthly class on bread making at The Store. Where does this passion for baking come from? “I just love baking. I’ve always loved it. I haven’t had any formal baking training but I do have family who are also bakers”. She then shows me a photo which now has pride of place in her corner bakery, depicting the re-opening of the Van Wegan bakery in Holland after the Second World War. “Oh, my uncle also had a bakery in Portland and another uncle also had a bakery.”
“What? It’s in your genes!” I exclaim.
“Well, maybe,” she laughs.
With her two older children living away from home now, would Jo like to expand her business?
“My experience in the restaurant taught me that it is very easy for a business to run you, rather than you running the business,” she says. “For that reason, I don’t want to expand the business to the point where I have the responsibility of staff.
“Lots of people ask whether I could use organic and stoneground flours. I could, but I would need to put my prices up and that would mean I would lose some of my customers. Not everyone can afford to pay the prices that I would need to charge for organic and stoneground flours.”
For Jo, food miles are more important than organic, which explains the sign in The Store, “All our breads are baked using produce from the garden, the immediate district and the Torquay farmers market”. Jo now bakes all the bread in the bakehouse at The Store.
“I make sure that my ingredients are sourced locally, so I use honey from Otway Apiaries; meat from Otway Prime will go into pasties; olive oil from Mt Moriac Olives, walnuts from Mike at Otway Walnuts, Lidgerwoods grain and seeds in Birregurra, Marshall Greens and Rayners Eggs. For dried fruits, I know that they cannot all be local but I buy them locally from Jo’s Pantry in Colac.”
Her move to Deans Marsh general store could be viewed as a little ‘expansionary’, I suggest. Jo is not convinced. This, Jo tells me, merely involves a trip down the gravel road from her home kitchen to a corner of The Store. Here you can buy a loaf or three of her Pennyroyal Bush Breads.
Should you wish to learn more about bread making or try your hand at baking, you can catch up with Jo as she gives one of her monthly bread making classes. If you are more the observer, you can watch Jo making the bread in the Store just as she has done in her compact kitchen a little back down the track amongst the trees.
Jo Zdybel bakes at The Store, Deans Marsh on Tuesdays, Wednesdays and Fridays for the weekend. Bread available at the The Store, Deans Marsh (03 5236 3305)