22/07/2026
//The Bread Flour Gap in Papua New Guinea for Home Bakers & small artisan bakers//
Since returning to Papua New Guinea after pastry school, one of my challenges as a pastry chef has been finding good-quality bread flour in practical sizes for home and small-scale artisan baking.
Bread flour is available but often only in 25 kg bags.
For a bakery, that may be practical. For home bakers, beginners and small artisan bakers who want to make sourdough, baguettes or country loaves, it can be too much flour and too great an upfront cost.
Rather than stop baking, I began testing using local plain flour or all purpose flour.
I’ve kept records of my sourdough bakes using locally available all-purpose flour—adjusting hydration, fermentation and handling to understand what the flour can and cannot support. It has worked well for focaccia, but stronger bread flour makes a noticeable difference when developing structure in certain artisan loaves like baguettes & country loaf or pain de campaign.
This experience has shown me that PNG does not necessarily lack aspiring bread bakers. We may simply lack access to the right ingredients in practical quantities.
Making quality bread flour available in 2 kg and 5 kg packs could encourage more people to learn bread-making, test recipes and eventually grow from home baking into small businesses.
Sometimes developing an industry begins with making the right tools and ingredients more accessible.
This is one of the market needs I’m exploring through Beyond Baking: making professional baking ingredients and supplies more accessible to PNG’s growing baking community.
