George Jackson behind the counter at his new bakery in Whanganui East. To his right is the pot that his nan used to make her own Rēwena bread. Photo / Bevan Conley
George Jackson behind the counter at his new bakery in Whanganui East. To his right is the pot that his nan used to make her own Rēwena bread. Photo / Bevan Conley
Whanganui's George Jackson has been making traditional Māori Rēwena potato bread for the past seven years but now he has a shop front.
Jackson's Rēwena Bread will open in Whanganui East next month.
Jackson said his nan made the bread when he was a kid, and he was "brought upwith it" since he was little.
"I wasn't a big fan of it way back then, but as I grew up and became teenager I just loved it," Jackson said
"She passed on when I was about 20, and the bread kind of disappeared for a while. Fast forward another 20 years and I met my cousin in a restaurant, who was making some.
"It goes all the way back to the 1840s in Taranaki.
"A member of my whanau was a maintenance guy on a ship, and he was friends with one of the cooks, who was Scottish or Irish.
"Potatoes were stacked up everywhere on those ships, and the cook had some kind of potato yeast that he used to make bread with. He gave some of that bug to the maintenance guy who took it home to his wife, who made some bread of her own.
"From Taranaki it came down to Ranana, where my nan was brought up, and she brought it to Putiki where I was brought up."
Jackson only makes traditional Rēwena bread, and that will be the one product for sale at the bakery.
Jackson's Rēwena Bread is located in the old Whanganui East Meat Market at 131 Duncan St. Photo / Bevan Conley
"If you don't have the potatoes, you don't have the bread," Jackson said.
"I get the ones that people are chucking away, which is pretty cool. It doesn't matter what kind they are either. The more starch the better. We actually planted some of the discarded ones out the back and they've already started growing."
The potatoes go through a peeler before being boiled in a pot for two to three hours. The water is then left to cool and it turns into "fermenting goodness".
"We get that water and add it to the bug, along with sugar and flour, and give it a mix up," Jackson said.
"Then you shut the lid and leave it. The bugs start multiplying over three days or so, then you make the bread."
The bug was added to flour and water, Jackson said, before being mixed into dough and left to sit in a warmer (30C) or a further nine hours.
"Then we take the dough out, knead it up, and put it into baking tins. From there it will go into a proving room for another three or four hours, and then off they go to the ovens to get baked.
'It's a pretty long process, start to finish."
Jackson said he would be opening the bakery, at 131 Duncan St on January 26, right after Wellington Anniversary Day.
"My bread is all natural. It's just flour, water, bug, sugar and salt, that's it. There's nothing artificial in there, it's all straight up old school.
"The sodium levels are low in it too, and because there's a longer proving process to it, the gluten is broken down and it's easier for the body to digest. On top of that it just tastes yum.
"You've got to eat it with butter. No margarine or anything, it's got to be butter.
"My ultimate aim is to supply the whole of New Zealand, and over time I want to take things to the next level."
