It's official. Wild Oats Bakery and Cafe in Carterton make the best fruit yeast buns in the country.
Bakery manager Adam Boutcher was presented with the gold medal for the buns at the NZ Baker of the Year awards in Christchurch last weekend.
Judged for their flavour, appearance and texture, the cafe's
buns came up trumps against scores of others around the country.
For Adam, it's the second major mark he's made on the Carterton cafe since his arrival in New Zealand just four years ago.
He has been immortalised on the large mural on the cafe's exterior walls as the baker proudly showing off his trays of bread.
Adam moved to New Zealand with his four children from Cambridgeshire in England. He has since met and married Rosalie, who also had four children and the household of eight children have become quite famous for their size in Carterton.
Adam learnt his trade in a busy supermarket bakery and in several village bakeries. After 10 years, the yearning to move to New Zealand for its wide-open spaces and for being a better place to raise children overcame him.
He found the Carterton job through the internet after typing in "baking in New Zealand" and was eventually passed on to the then president of the NZ Baking Society, the late Peter Gray.
Peter at the time was in the throes of setting up the new business in Carterton in partnership with top Wellington deli owner Martin Chait. A little more emailing and a phone interview and it all clicked into place.
Adam finds the New Zealand baking scene in supermarkets similar to Britain but the smaller bakeries remind him of English bakeries 20 years ago when a lot more "scratch baking" was done.
This is when food is made from scratch, which is what Wild Oats does.
"It makes for very satisfying baking", he said.
Awards are not unusual for Wairarapa bakers. Earlier this month Masterton pastry chef Michael Kloeg, from the 10cc Bakery and Cafe, was in the winning team in a transtasman "bake-off" and also won a a gold medal in the New Zealand Baking Society Apprentice of the Year competition.
