By milling its own flour, this local bakery doesn’t just make better bread, it builds stronger communities

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Can a bakery be classified as a restaurant?

If you define a restaurant as a place where customers can buy something to eat and drink and there’s somewhere for them to sit down and enjoy their purchase, I think so.

Which means that Miller + Baker – a Northbridge bakery-cafe with indoor counter seats plus some tables and chairs scattered across the Lake Street footpath – absolutely fits the description.

But what if you decided to open a bakery that became more than somewhere to eat? I’m not sure if that was Rachel and Mark Taylor’s goal when they opened Miller + Baker in the former home of Italian bakery Casa del Dolce back in 2019, but seven years on, the Taylors’ Little-Corner-Bakery-That-Could feels like more than just somewhere to buy bread.

Inspired by the sourdough and organic food culture the couple enjoyed while living in Copenhagen, the Taylors returned to Perth and were keen to recreate their experience.

One such lesson was the deliciousness and nutritional value of sourdough bread made from good wheat.

Fate led the Taylors to the Heggarty family, founders of Natural Intelligence Farming and owners of a wheat farm in Mollerin in the Wheatbelt.

The Heggartys’ regenerative agriculture approach – a system that, in a pesticide-free nutshell, eschews chemical inputs in favour of natural approaches that improve soil health – resonated with what the Taylors were looking for.

With wheat (and occasionally rye) supply locked in, they set about learning the finer points of the stone mill they bought from America and began turning this single-origin grain into freshly milled flour: more nutritious and better tasting than commercially sold commodity flours.

But hey, don’t take my word for it – take home one of the bakery’s Millers sourdough loaves and taste if for yourself. A hefty rugby ball of a loaf that contains more wholewheat flour than any other core Miller + Baker product, its dense crumb is the colour of milky tea and reveals bold flashes of, well, wheaten richness with each chew. This is not a bread one buys if they need a neutral, flavourless medium.

It’s also not a big seller. Or at least, according to the Taylors, compared to the bakery’s regular classic sourdough that, due to its reduced wholewheat flour ratio, boasts a crumb with more spring and puffier pockets of air.

You can take away loaves of classic sourdough too, but if you felt like enjoying it in situ, there’s a glass cabinet filled with ace pre-made sandwiches that are dying to meet you.

While the sangers are based on combinations that should be familiar to most – roast beef, ham and cheese, chicken and salad – little details in the kitchen ensure what guests are eating is less lunch bar and more café.

The chook for the chicken salad number, for instance, is roasted in-house and moistened with a salad dressing packing a healthy jolt of acidity. The result is a flavour that’s closer to an Eastern European potato salad.

Served in gaseous baguettes that are more chewy than crisp, the roast beef roll is made with the good stuff that’s been slowly poached on-site until soft and yielding.

To finish: a sprightly chimichurri sauce that had more to say than most of the lacklustre versions served around town. The top half of the ham and cheese baguette is dabbed at with hot English mustard while the bottom is primed with thick smears of nutty brown butter. Recent sightings of free agent consultant chef Frankie Dawson treading the boards in the Miller + Baker kitchen can only mean good things for the menu.

You’ll spy other people of interest in the bakery too. Steven Jackson, a Perth cook that owned St Kilda’s Miss Jackson café, has been managing the kitchen for the past two years while baker Emanuele Vittozzi keeps close watch on the ovens. Between them, they ensure that the pork and fennel sausage roll is chunky in the best possible ways; the croissants are a healthy mix of crisp and that cotton-wool softness; and that the two-pastry pies – shortcrust cases, puff pastry lids – have lift-off.

Beyond supporting small producers and quietly raising awareness of good farming and food nutrition, Miller + Baker is building communities in other ways too. The Taylors are partners in cheery Parkside Coffee down the road; they’ve opened another outpost on Hobart Street in North Perth; the cheery staff host a run club; plus the space next to the bakery is now The Mill Room Mercantile, a polished homewares store. It’s amazing what you can achieve by rethinking what a bakery can be.

Good Food reviews are booked anonymously and paid independently. A restaurant can’t pay for a review or inclusion in the Good Food Guide.