Capetonians know Truth Coffee Roasting for its distinctive coffee shop and bakes. David Donde’s business has now expanded into baking at scale inside Flour Market, supplying many favourite eateries across the Cape Town CBD.
It starts with a baguette. A multitude of folds from diagonal slashes across the top before baking, pointed and crisp at either end. Slight resistance to reveal a spongy, irregular pattern of holes.
A large sourdough, firm crust, its seeds soaked in water to keep the inside moist. Full of depth after a long fermentation process, it tastes far superior to anything a supermarket sells.
Stepping behind to the air-conditioned pastry kitchen, dough is expertly folded. Then rolled, folded, rested and baked as a tray of golden croissants: crisp outside, beautifully buttery layers offering chewy sweetness. Eating a croissant is a warm, slightly yeasty wonder.
I’ve been quizzing the obsessed baking team at David Donde’s latest project, Flour Market, just outside the CCID footprint, on the corner of Hope and Roodehek Streets. Ample steel windows cast sunlight on wooden benches for customers in a white-walled space, hiding the production capacity of a working bakery with a fast-expanding wholesale arm.
REAL FOOD, NO SHORTCUTS
Donde has been roasting coffee in the city before it became mainstream. He made his mark with Origin Coffee and then founded Truth, a roastery and flagship coffee shop in Buitenkant Street. Truth regulars assemble to eat or to caffeine-fuel their laptop sessions near a large vintage 1940s coffee roaster. Industrial steel and steampunk moodiness give this old Victorian warehouse a grittiness, in keeping with its serving hatch which opens on to a pavement that’s a pulsing urban artery.
Truth’s croissants, pastries, rolls and breads are baked daily at Flour Market. So is everything for their wholesale arm. Local flour is preferred – Bio-Wheat, Eureka or Gideon – but only French butter makes the cut in croissants, its superior fat and lower moisture content infusing better. French butter also has no additives, explains Senior Chef Laurence Smith.
“Our policy is real food, no shortcuts,” declares David Donde. “So, no preservatives ever. We’re extremely fussy about the suppliers we use. It’s a process to continuously improve on that wherever we can.” These products carry premium pricing.
Says Donde: “What makes us proud about our sourdough is it’s only four ingredients: flour, salt, water and time. Our mother dough is 20 years old, and a loaf takes about 48 hours. It’s not rushed.“ Bemoaning standards of general bread is a recurring theme here.
TOASTIES & BUNS
Attention is diverted with a Flour Market cheese toastie called “The One with the Tomato”. It’s an insanely good combo of toasted sourdough, oozy gruberg, cheddar and mozzarella goo, with plump, slow-roasted tomatoes. Sourdough slices, not too thick, nicely manageable to chew. (Order its tasty cousin at Truth, with tomato, cheese and basil.) The benedict bun is another must-have: slow-roasted tomatoes, bacon and free-range eggs on a toasted English muffin. Homemade and airy, hollandaise sauce drips down its side.
Smith, being a British pastry chef, explains that English muffins undergo “a partial fermentation, are panfried and then baked with a second fermentation”. For the group, he oversees the cakes and sweet stuff such as monkey buns and Danish pastries.
Head baker Marcus Fundi says real bread can ease gut issues – he chose baking as a speciality after it helped his own health. “Customers often tell us they can’t eat white bread, but find our baguette doesn’t give any problems. The dough, from scratch, could be made in two to three hours, but we make it over a day.”
Traditionally a sourdough doesn’t give problems, he adds to universal nods around the table. It allows time for the enzymes to break down, explains Smith. I make a mental note to tell my friend who’s cut out bread.
“Where we can we’d rather use traditional processes,” says Donde. “It’s easy to throw in an improver which causes fast fermentations. At Flour Market we’re going the slow food route instead.”
Slow food perhaps, but the pace of Donde’s business expansions is not. Truth hosts PlayDate evenings, luring with chess, wines or cocktails with supper, Tuesday to Saturday. Donde’s gourmet chocolate and ice cream experience, Rapt, has moved to Sea Point. And now Flour Market is scaling up in wholesale.
Ever the purist, Donde likens breadmaking to speciality coffee. “There’s no regulation of bakeries. You can count on a few of us in Cape Town for the real fermented thing.”
DELIVERING AT SCALE
Fundi says Flour Market now wholesales to more than 25 businesses regularly. “In the CCID footprint, we supply to around 15 cafés or restaurants, and the number is climbing.”
These include The Belly Restaurant Group including BURI and Belly of the Beast; Gorgeous George Hotel; The Ladder; Sandwich Revolution; Nish Nush; Swan Café, in Buitenkant; Mulberry & Prince; The General Store; and Nude Foods.
“The reason we originally started baking was because our supplier was unreliable and had a four-day lead time,” explains Donde. The bakery currently employs 42. “It’s also about inspiring people to make the right choices about what they eat,” adds Fundi.
Donde’s goal has always been to chase better, not more. “That doesn’t mean you have to take shortcuts. You can run a business at scale without compromise. We’re pumping out hundreds of each product without shortcuts. It’s understanding the process and the space required to allow the time we need. We’re producing about 200 sourdoughs a day, and we’ll go to 2 000 loaves if we need to.”
He plans to open Flour Market 24/7 soon. His thinking: bakers work shifts, so why not attract night owls with Uber Eats deliveries. “We just had to buy a second delivery vehicle anyway.”
A few mornings later, I pop into Flour Market and spot Fundi. Will a 24/7 bakery work, I ask, with people ordering bread in the early hours?
“We always find a spot in the middle, where we can achieve balance.”
- FLOUR MARKET | 105 Hope Street, Gardens | 021 201 7000 | Monday to Sunday from 07h00-16h00 | @flourmarket
IMAGES: Kim Maxwell, Flour Market