Meet Your Baker

Hello! My name is Pauline. Folk call me Aunty Popo. I am a Zimbabwean native now living in Australia. I bake because I love to bake. I have been baking for as long as I can remember.

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When we were little, my sisters and I used to watch our mother bake on a traditional stove in a rural area where she worked as a rural nurse. She would make a fire and let it die down, leaving these huge red ambers that would burn all night until the next morning. Don’t ask me how she made the fire, all I know is she was too good at it.

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Then she would make a dough from flour and yeast. I always thought she had everything she needed for baking at her disposal. For the longest time I believed she would only pick whatever she wanted from the grocery store. Kids! The truth is, as I would find out later in life, she was simply creative. We kept chooks and so there were eggs galore, for breakfast, for sale, for giving away to neighbours, and of course for baking.

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So mum would make her dough and when it was ready, she would cover it with a clean tea towel and allow it to rise overnight. The following morning, she would place the dough into a cast-iron three-legged pot. She would then scoop some of the hot ambers and place them aside, lift the three-legged pot and place it on top of the hot ambers. Lastly, she would cover the pot, placing the lid upside down, and then putting the scooped ambers on top of the lid. The oven was set!