THE GOODS

IT MAY have slipped your attention that the 30-day vegan challenge is on this month, perhaps because those who signed up aren't sporting a hairy signifier of participation on their upper lips like those who've joined another, more prominent, November cause. To mark the challenge's half-way point, Animal Liberation Victoria is hosting a vegan barbecue at South Melbourne Market tomorrow morning. They'll be frying up vegan standards such as vegetable skewers, mock meat snags and burgers and scrambled tofu, along with dairy-free pastries from La Panella Bakery and cup cakes and brownies from Nelly's Vegan Bakery.

Armed Men Rob Bakery

POLICE are hunting three men who robbed a Mayfield bakery with a wheel brace, tyre lever and a knife yesterday morning.

Kosher Bakery Rolls Out Doughnuts For Festival Of Lights

CHRISTMAS gets all the publicity but there are other faiths, and other rituals going on about town.

Falcones Bakery Rises To Occasion

A 50-YEAR-OLD Port Kembla business that started from humble beginnings to become one of the largest privately owned bakeries in the country, will feature on a national television program this Sunday.

Hunter Baker Rises Above Rest

Thompson and Son's Bakery showed NSW how it's done.

Drought Begins To Bite At The Checkout

DROUGHT will cause "significant increases" in the cost of food, including meat, milk, eggs and bakery goods, Australia's biggest retail boss, Woolworths chief executive Michael Luscombe, has warned.

Banh Mi (or The Saigon Sambo)

Taste Bakery

Retail Food Group On A Roll With Patisserie Buy

A WAVE of consolidation is sweeping the bakery and cafe sectors, making unlikely friends of doughnuts and baguettes.

Baker Brown Rises To Challenge

ALL week, Greg Brown has promised that his tiny, unprepossessing Glen Eira bakery will finally open this morning with batches of freshly made loaves, muffins and tarts on offer. And all made by hand. It's a poignant reminder that he's lost none of his artisanal skill as a baker, despite a body afflicted by multiple sclerosis and a mind of failing memories.

Cockroach Bakery Owner Receives Fine

THE operator of a Wollongong hot bread shop that was crawling with cockroaches has been fined $2000.

For The Older Mum

1. The good thing about giving cake as a present is that it?s a present to be shared. And the good thing about a Mother's Day cake is that there is such a wide selection available. Head for the cake shop ... or the supermarket ... or the bakery.

On A Jam Roll

A bakery with a soft spot for old-fashioned favourites has become an institution.

Raising Dough Offshore

Would you like grain with that? After one early failure, a bakery franchise tries the US market again, writes Christopher Webb.

Bread With Sole

The "sole" in Solebake Artisan Bakery sounds like it should be a reference to the Spanish word for the sun (sole) but it refers to the baker's term for the floor of an oven, the place where a loaf develops its crunchy crust. Baking on the sole may mean you fit fewer loaves in an oven but the results are worth it - consistently toasty and golden bread. Solebake owner Dave Barden is a veteran of Camberwell's Cafe Moravia, The Authentic Village Baker, Degani and Filous Patisserie in Carlton and many ...

Rolling In It

Melbourne's bakery boom means we are spoiled for choice this Christmas. Michael Harden reports.

Brumby's Has Dough To Grow

BAKERY franchise operator Brumby's is chasing acquisitions in the food retail industry in a bid to boost earnings ahead of a possible float on the Australian Stock Exchange.

Three Of A Kind Burek

Balkan Oven Bakery Cafe

Under $10 - Radicchio And Taleggio Flatbread, $8

There's fresh interest in the State Library of Victoria and it has little to do with the collection - although the grand institution's first librarian, Augustus Henry Tulk, would be duly impressed. A late-morning rendezvous at Mr Tulk, the library's cafe-cum-espresso-bar, calls for a quick bite to share. The crisp-toasted flatbread, from Dench Bakery, with bitter leaves and mildly flavoured melted taleggio, is a fine duet; simple, distinctive and instantly appealing - much like the cafe itself. ...

Goodman Fielder Buys Out Upper-crust Bakery

FOOD company Goodman Fielder has made its first purchase since its $2.1 billion float in December. Country Life Bakery

Top Five ...gluten-free Stops

1 Silly Yaks Bakery Cafe, 105 High Street, Northcote, phone 9482 3999