CERES Organic Bakery

Nestled in the much-loved CERES Grocery, you’ll find CERES newest enterprise – our micro-bakery, baking with heirloom grains and locally-milled flour each day.

The CERES Organic Bakery launched in March of 2021, sticking to our roots, we bake bread that uses Australian heritage and organic quality flour, that uses a slow fermentation process across 24 hours. Using organic heritage flour means that the bread is highly nutritious and easy to digest due to its lower gluten content.

You can find CERES Bakery bread on the shelves at the CERES Grocery – open every day from 9am to 5pm, or shop online through CERES Fair Food.

Read more about our Head Baker, Alex below.

From Monday through to Sunday you can find Alex Iordanov and his team baking delicious organic bread and pastries. Alex was able to pop out from his cosy bread corner to have a chat about his life and love of baking.

Where did you grow up?

I grew up in a small town called Guerande, located in Brittany on the west coast of France and I moved to Australia in 2008. I’ve always wanted to become a pastry chef and enrolled in a bakery school in France when I was 15.

Who are your main influences?

I was born into a family of French bakers, so there was plenty of inspiration around me. My grandad has always been a big influence on me and my baking. But in terms of the industry, anyone who is working to establish a more sustainable and transparent way of baking is a huge inspiration for me. Organic and sustainable farming is really important, using local millers and sharing resources with local bakers to promote sustainable ways of baking is something I work towards.

My friend, mentor and fellow baker James Fisher is the owner of a boutique milling company Rockpaperflour who is a great source of inspiration in my career. We ran a wood-fired sourdough bakery together in East Gippsland called Cannibal Creek Bakery, and since then has started up one of Victoria’s only organic, local flour miller for bakers. Which CERES supports in our organic bakery. Although, with my roots being French, the French baking style and technique are deeply ingrained in my practice.

How long have you been working with CERES?

I started at Ceres in 2017 working at the grocery cafe, where the manager Beck supported me to develop a new menu for the cafe and grow the cafe to what it is now. After a successful few years, the natural progression for me was to add bread to the menu and the CERES Organic Bakery was born.

CERES is such a supportive place to be, and I’m honoured to be able to grow this social enterprise from scratch. We’ve been open since March 2021, and we’re already looking for a second baker which will allow us to bake everyday! Being able to do what I love for an organisation like CERES is so rewarding, I love knowing that I’m playing my part in a bigger picture.

Pop into the CERES Organic Bakery for freshly baked organic bread and pastries from your very own local micro bakery.