There’s something a little bit magic about people who feed others for a living. Food is so rich with meaning for so many of us, and the lockdown world we’re in has meant we’re all cooking more every day, whether we like it or not. Thankfully we are happy cooks most of the time but even still…we’re now months into all meals at home all the time, often pulled together after long work days that offer no headspace to even conceive of what dinner should be until the time for dinner has arrived, some constraints around supply (lolz), and don’t start with the drama that shopping is now. There have been tears. There have been some Interesting meals, many involving the cook’s best friend, an egg. And there has been plenty of delicious, too, helped in large part by the inspiration and generosity of people like chef Danielle Alvarez, the good people of Good Food, and always, dearest chef Jeremy Lee keeping us all entertained on Instagram with his sketches and his beautiful at-home meals. And too many more to name.

This crisis gives us plenty of things to worry about, from the gigantic to the teensy. For us this includes our food people - the restaurants, their suppliers, the grocers, the farmers, the chefs, the bakers, the butchers, the cheese-makers, the chocolatiers, the coffee roasters…the list goes on. How will they hang on when they’ve been forced to shut their doors, when they’ve been locked out of the places they love and have built through years of sweat and toil? And what about the people who work for them? Here in Wellington, people like Coffee Supreme and the Shelly Bay Baker jumped into the fray early, ensuring they could keep on feeding people by post and delivery van. The work, we know, has been long and exhausting and WE ARE SO GRATEFUL. Grateful for every cup of Bob-o-Link, every hot cross bun, every slice of toast that hasn’t been produced from the sometimes-balky home starter.

As the lockdown restrictions have eased, more of our beloved food people have been able to come online, in an often total reorientation and reinvention of their business models, to both feed people and keep their businesses afloat. Which brings us tonight, when we finally had a meal not entirely prepared by ourselves, with the treat of a produce box from Wellington’s Rita restaurant. We knew it would have some pantry items and some produce and beyond that … well, it would be a surprise. (We’d also ordered a wee cake and a custard square because, well, weeks of sometimes Interesting meals make you a bit eager where treats are concerned.)

So you can imagine the joy of opening this box, full as it was of beautiful food and, there’s really only one word for it, love. Homemade passata in a jar, fresh herbs, an amazing aioli, beautiful vegetables and a gorgeous loaf of bread. A few perfect limes! Tomatillos! Radicchio - are you serious? MY STARS. Things that make a cook’s heart leap. All packed up with notes explaining what was in the box, who made it, and some ideas about how to use the jewels inside.

So a heartfelt thank you to Kelda and Paul and the rest of the team at Rita, and all the other food heroes out there who have kept things rolling, like our local Baker Gramercy (oh croissants), Rich and People’s coffees, the good folk behind the foodie collective @pandemicpack and the many, many others so eager to get back to opening their doors later this week. We wish you all the best - from an appropriate distance, of course. But someday when we can we might just give you a big ol’ hug and embarass the dickens out of you.

It’s no surprise that the Shelly Bay Baker is by the sea. Owner and sole baker Sam Forbes has an energy in the kitchen that is as relentless as the tide, and his enthusiasm for sourdough is as vast as the ocean itself.

We caught up with Sam recently to get the story behind his craft and to learn where his passion for sourdough comes from.

He rewinds us 16 years to when he was 11 years old and already earning his stripes in a commercial kitchen. OK, so at this stage he’s peeling potatoes and doing the menial stuff in small-town west Wales. But he’s there in the kitchen, absorbing the tastes, the aromas, the tension, the bonhomie and the buzz of creation. And then there is the cash. Pocket money on steroids. When you have eight siblings financial independence has to be a good thing.

He kept going, building his repertoire with formal training and practical experience, and at 16 he was a full time chef. For someone who was never all that enamoured with school, this was a vocation that returned much… and opened the door on the unique party lifestyle that the hospitality industry is infamous for.

But this kid is diligent - he’s not one to faff about wasting time or energy. A bit of travel that takes in Australia, and a year in Queenstown, provided a buffer before he established himself in London and the rarefied air of fine dining.

London was also where he got another taste of Kiwi style, when he met and married his partner Bryony. When time was up on her OE it was an easy call for them to come back to New Zealand in 2013. For her, it was to study medical anthropology, now at master's stage; for him, it was to continue his kitchen odyssey.

Sam landed in Wellington and in a larder stocked to the brim with encouragement and opportunity. It was Miramar’s The Larder restaurant, run by Jacob Brown and Sarah Bullock – masters of hospitality on both sides of the kitchen counter. It was here in 2016 that the epiphany occurred. Sam was at university studying geology, environmental science and biology - just to prove he could do it. Keeping his hand in at The Larder meant baking the bread in the morning before heading off to study. This presented Sam with a ‘THIS IS IT’ moment. This is the way he’s going to do his own thing. Bread. Satisfying, comforting, healthy, wholesome bread. Sourdough bread.

“What do I love about it? It’s about creating something. Those sacks of flour turn into loaves.

”It’s not so much about developing new recipes. It’s tinkering with the ones I have. They’re never the same really. It depends on the temperature of the day and humidity, you’re really dominated by the weather.”

— Sam Forbes

Jacob and Sarah not only let Sam go with good grace, they loaned him half the money he needed to get set up. But first it was off to the San Francisco Baking Institute run by Frenchman Michel Suas. His business helps bakers around the world with hands-on, real-world experience that combines modern technology with traditional artisan techniques. You can see a connection here – Michel was baking at 14.

Sam amplified the three-week Institute course with bakery work on both coasts, including New York, Vermont, San Diego and back to the sourdough capital of San Francisco (a thing that started when the French bought their sourdough baking skills to the Californian gold rush in the mid-1800’s).

Sam liberated a little piece of history when he uplifted an American starter for the trip home. (A little science: sourdough starters are a simple fermented mixture of flour and water that contain a colony of microorganisms including wild yeast and lactobacilli. A starter is what makes sourdough the more easily digested magic that it is compared to breads made with yeast or baking soda.)

Once he got back home the dream took shape in 2017, when the Shelly Bay site unexpectedly popped up on Sharedspace. Americans Sharon Galeon and Midori Willoughby had started Wooden Spoon Boutique Freezery in 2011 and they had space to spare in the Bay. They thought a fellow artisan back from a visit to their homeland was the perfect culinary collaborator.

Making every dollar go as far as it could, Sam and Bryony mucked in to create the bakery in the Freezery building. Tracking down a series of leads was doubly rewarded when an ex-Pak 'n' Save oven was found for a good price and an industrial food mixer was thrown in for free. Bryony’s handyman family did the fitout, and the company logo was a family affair as well.

Then it was down to the business of baking.

Sam is a machine in the kitchen. It’s just him. It’s his domain and he is the master. Looking like the lead in Jesus Christ Superstar he simply does not stop when we’re talking to him. Taking photographs is a dance class. His ‘work triangle’ is more like a hexagon and it’s well worn – bench for ingredients and tinkering with the recipe on the computer screen above, to the mixer to add flour, to the dough tubs that sit for 12-16 hours to lift and fold, to the whiteboard to record, to the bench, to the mixer to empty and clean, to the tubs to measure acidity. All the time scanning the thermometers for ambient temperature, because just one or two degrees either way will mean a change to production processes. Later it will be cranking up the oven – carefully so as to not blow out the three-phase power supply. Later still it will be milling grains and preparing ingredients for the next onslaught.

Repeat. Repeat. Repeat.

That’s the way to churn through 750 kilograms of flour a week. That’s the way to bake a couple thousand loaves and bagels a week. And Sam reckons that’s the way to pay back your loans and be working for yourself and not The Man.

All it takes is working between 4am and 1pm for six days a week … and be at the market selling on the seventh. Thank goodness for Bryrony chipping in on market day too - especially training up other sellers so they can impart 'the knowledge'.

Originally there were no sales targets. Just bake. The plan was to supply the popular markets. Harbourside Market in town as well as Karori and Newtown in the suburbs supported the cause. But then demand for wholesale supply kicked in as well - to the likes of Peoples in Newtown, Havana Brothers, Maranui Cafe, Queen Sally’s Diamond Deli, Commonsense Organics, Milk Crate and others. It’s all proven Sam’s theory that there’s enough consumer demand for sourdough to support him and the others like Leeds Street, Baker Gramercy, Neville Chun and Catherine Adams, and that it's growing all the time.

Sam is also looking forward to his own version of the Shelly Bay development. He’s already pondering the possibility of a retail space on the site, as well as making the bakery even bigger and better. He’s also recently had a fellow San Francisco Institute colleague with him helping to refine recipes and processes – including adopting the emerging modern bread philosophy of minimising handling. He’s already found ways to reduce production time and therefore make more bread in the same time. It sounds like he just grew another arm and leg.

But he’s also aware that small business is vulnerable. Anything can and does happen, as he was reminded on the eve of his short Christmas holiday. The last day’s baking was destroyed when the fridge malfunctioned. Sourdough that was being restrained at a cool 4 degrees was suddenly 20 degrees and busting out everywhere. Sam arrived at midnight to check and found the chaos. There was nothing to do but throw it all away. Eight rubbish bags of ruined dough is not something you put out for Santa.

Even then he was baking bread on the break, content to know it wasn’t going to be that flash when it’s coming out of holiday ovens and BBQ’s – but such is the joy of baking he’ll give it a go anyway.

So how does he cope with the relentless effort and heat of the kitchen?

A nightly swim in the bracing waters just metres from the bakery is the tonic. It’s another reward for working in Shelly Bay, a place that feels a million miles from the urban centre in plain sight just over the water.

You can’t help but think that’s the secret that whets his appetite for success.

You can find Sam and his bread at open-air markets and some food shops throughout Wellington. The best place to check for an up-to-date list is his website here.