The Swartland, a region in the Western Cape of South Africa, rolls out in waves of green and gold, fields of wheat stretching toward the horizon under a vast, open sky. Winter cloaks the land in tender green; summer ignites it in sunlight and gold. In Moorreesburg, the church bell tolls softly, marking the hours, while somewhere nearby, the scent of baking drifts from a small bakery. It’s the kind of smell that makes you pause and makes you wonder what stories lie behind the crust of a loaf.
Meeting Carien
I first met Carien at Moorrees Bakery, over a bacon-and-cheese sourdough toastie that lingered long after the last bite. In that moment, I knew I wanted to write about the bread and the story behind it. Not long after, I arranged to sit down with her.
A Bakery Born of Circumstance
Carien Hugo-Waring hadn’t set out to open a bakery. When she and her husband, Craig, moved to the Swartland during the COVID years, it was to be closer to her mother, who was living with dementia. Around the same time, a supermarket group closed its training facility in Moorreesburg. Carien and Craig rented the space and eventually bought it.
Just as they were ready to open, the second lockdown began.
“Those first six months were grace,” Carien recalls. With fewer pressures from the outside world, she had time to get to know her staff, understand the bakery’s rhythm, and grow into her role. What began as circumstance slowly revealed itself as a calling.
Before this chapter, Carien worked as a brand ambassador in the wine industry, a world where provenance, patience, and craft are deeply valued. Sourdough, she would discover, demanded the same care. Skilled bakers were scarce in the early days, so she stepped in herself.
She remembers lifting the dough for the first time:
“It felt like I’d done it a thousand times before,” she said.
For a year, she baked every loaf herself before appointing another baker.
Bertha: A Living Starter
At the heart of Moorrees is a simple principle: bread made slowly, through natural fermentation, without commercial yeast, additives, or shortcuts. Every loaf begins with Bertha, a living sourdough starter Carien affectionately describes as nearly forty years old and originally from Israel. Like all living cultures, Bertha requires daily attention.
The baking follows a steady rhythm. Mondays are for feeding and strengthening Bertha. Tuesdays are for mixing and folding dough, which then rests slowly in the fridge. Wednesdays are reserved for baking. Time does much of the work.
Long fermentation transforms sugars, carbohydrates, and some gluten, creating bread that is flavorful and digestible. Modern commercial bread prioritises speed and consistency: high-yield wheat, chemical inputs, rapid fermentation. Cheap and fast, yes — but often at the cost of taste, digestibility, and nutrition. Slow bread, Carien says, is “something the body can recognise and process.”
From Field to Loaf
Fermentation is only part of the story. The wheat used at Moorrees comes from a farm less than six kilometres away, run by Cobus Bester, whose family has farmed the Swartland for over 160 years. In the early 1990s, Cobus began questioning the long-term health of his soil, long before “regenerative” or “conservation agriculture” were popular terms. Today, biodiversity, minimal chemical intervention, and soil resilience guide his farming. Grain quality, not maximum yield, is the goal, and it shows in the bread.
This closeness between field and bakery is rare. Moorrees is among a small number of bakeries globally where wheat is grown, milled, and baked within a few kilometres of each other. When students from the University of Gastronomic Sciences in Piemont, Italy — home of the Slow Food movement — visited, they highlighted what Carien had taken for granted: this proximity creates a grain loop increasingly rare in modern food systems. Freshly milled grain retains more nutrients, especially in the wheat germ, which deteriorates quickly once crushed.
Bread as Connection
Carien speaks of bread not as a product, but as a form of connection: between farmer and baker, baker and customer, past and present. “People remember food made with care,” she says. “You can feel it.”
That care extends beyond the bakery. Moorrees offers baking classes, online tutorials, and a delivery network supplying bread across the Western Cape. Craig mills custom flour blends on their Austrian-made mill, Klaus, which are sent to members of their baking club nationwide. Knowledge travels with the grain.
Looking ahead, Carien is excited about expansion: a small sandwich and coffee shop in Cape Town offering fresh bread twice a week, and a licensing model allowing owner-operated businesses to trade under the Moorrees name without franchising.
The Heart of Slow Bread
Spending time at the bakery, it becomes clear that this is not about nostalgia or purity for its own sake. It is about restoring a relationship with food, with land, and with time. In a town defined by wheat, bread has come full circle: what grows nearby is used nearby, what is learned is shared, and what is made is made with attention.
Good bread, I’ve learned, is not only about ingredients or technique. It is about proximity. Care. And the willingness to slow down enough to honour what sustains us.
Where to find Moorrees Bakery: https://moorrees.co.za/
