SOUTH WEST: An unassuming bakery in the middle of Yallingup Beach Road carries with it the stories and business pursuits of a generation of bakers.
Travellers driving off the beaten track in the coastal hamlet of Yallingup, in pursuit of the scent of freshly baked goods, will find themselves at a colourful shed tucked away among the bushes.
There lies the culmination of generations of bakers, introducing handcrafted, biodynamic German-baked goods to the state’s South West.
Yallingup Gugelhupf, on Yallingup Beach Road, is the yeasted cake spin-off of Yallingup Woodfired Bread on Balmoral Drive.
In the early 2000s, baker Gotthard Bauer and his wife, Marion, moved from Stuttgart to Yallingup to start up the woodfire bakery and produce German sourdough loaves.
The woodfired bakery offers four types of bread prepared with locally grown biodynamic grain and baked in a woodfire-powered volcanic stone oven, built by Mr Bauer.
The Bauer family followed the success by opening Yallingup Gugelhupf in 2014, with a focus on pastries.
A confection like a Bundt cake, the Gugelhupf is baked in a distinctive ring pan and is popular as a traditional sweet in central Europe. Yallingup Gugelhupf owner and Mr Bauer’s daughter, Valerie Massa-Bauer, said starting up bakeries had been the family’s business for generations.
Ms Massa-Bauer said she grew up on her family’s farm in Stuttgart, which housed a bakery, a flour mill, a café and a little shop.
“My great grandfather, he started a flour mill and bakery back in Germany, and my grandfather, my grandma, and then my parents were continuing in the business,” she said.
“It’s still going now. My uncle is running that.
“It was my dad and my uncle who ran the business together, and the idea was to have somewhere [else] in the big, wild world to open another bakery.”
In 2001, Ms Massa-Bauer and her family visited Western Australia for three months.
“My dad went travelling all around the world, and he really liked it here,” she said.
“When I was 15, we came for three months to see how we would like that and for us kids, if we could adapt … we came down here, and my parents fell in love with Yallingup.”
Yallingup Gugelhupf opened in 2014.
It took a couple of years until Ms Massa-Bauer moved to Perth permanently.
“I wanted to be all grown up, and I stayed in the city,” she told Business News.
“I studied hospitality and lived there for a while, while my mum and dad built the [Yallingup] woodfired bakery, and that opened in 2003.
“Once I came down here, me and my husband opened the Gugelhupf.”
Over the past decade, the Gugelhupf shop evolved to suit the customers’ preferences.
“It changed a lot since we’ve been open. Dad’s idea was to keep it really simple, like the woodfired bread, where we only do three or four different kinds with the fruit loaf,” Ms Massa-Bauer said.
“He wanted to do something similar, but didn’t really think about it too much.
“It was just that this space came available, and someone asked him if he wants to open something.
“At the time I came down here, I had a one-year-old and was looking into going back into work.
“We started off with making sweet and savoury Gugelhupf, but more the traditional way, which is a yeasted cake.
“But that was sort of moving quite slow at the beginning and then we added on with sandwiches and quiches.”
The Bauer footprint
Outside of Yallingup, Gotthard Bauer would be best known as one of the proprietors of Bread in Common in Fremantle, a joint venture with restaurateur Nic Trimboli.
In 2013, Bread in Common opened its doors and sold a limited menu of four bread types, like the Yallingup woodfired bakery.
Mr Bauer reportedly gifted a 10-year-old sourdough starter for Bread in Common to produce one of its artisanal loaves.
He also helped launch Singaporean bakery Firebake in 2017, offering advice to the manufacturing of the business’s oven that was modelled on Mr Bauer’s Yallingup shops.
The South West has not been forgotten, with Mr Bauer also involved with woodfired bakeries in Margaret River, which opened in 2017, and in Bunbury, which has since closed.
Ms Massa-Bauer said her father took a step back from running the Yallingup Gugelhupf in recent years.
That was when Ms Massa-Bauer and her husband experimented with “non-traditional” German pastries in the shop, which eventually became the Gugelhupf’s bestsellers.
“We came up with a little mini Gugelhupf with a custard and raspberry jam in Nutella, which is sort of an invention … so that’s not really anything traditional,” she said.
“Now me and my husband are directors on the board, and dad has stepped even further back.
“We’re trying to grow it more and hopefully come up with new recipes, new ideas and get it out further. It’s early stages … [but we’re] trying to get bigger and more adventurous.”
Yallingup Woodfired Bread, the ‘parent’ bakery to Gugelhupf.
Navigating around COVID-19 had been tough for many businesses, including Ms Massa-Bauer’s.
She said while there was a boost in domestic tourism when the Western Australian borders were closed, the business was challenged by the lack of available labour.
“Business-wise, the South West just became so busy, but staffing wise, it was tricky, very tricky,” she told Business News.
“But we overcame that now, and travellers are back.
“Being in a tourist region, I think we’ve got the benefits of travellers coming through when we’re really busy, but also, on the other hand, they’re moving on, and it’s sometimes hard to keep staff.”
Ms Massa-Bauer said the bakeries her family opened and operated in WA could be home for the next generation of bakers, with her children potentially on the cards for ownership.
“[It’s also] for my cousins back in Germany, if they ever wanted to come … [they’ll] have somewhere to go, a place where they know there is a little bit of family as well,” she said.
“Ideally, in the far future, it would be nice to expand and get bigger.
“But for now, for the next few years, we’re going to concentrate on here in Yallingup and see how we can make it work and make it grow.”
