In the rich volcanic soil on the banks of the Albert River near Beaudesert in Queensland, Harry Tommerup is sowing the seeds of change on the family farm. For the first time in generations, wheat is being grown and harvested on the property the Tommerups have farmed since 1874. Twenty-seven-year-old Harry is part of a new generation of farmers cultivating small crops of traditional and modern boutique wheat varieties grown not for high yields or commodity markets, but for nutrition, flavour and, increasingly, ease of digestion.

“Our daily bread isn’t what it used to be,” says delicious. Produce Awards judge for 21 years and restaurateur of more than four decades, Alla Wolf-Tasker AM. “After 10,000 years of wheat being the basis of our civilisation, so much bread has become mass-produced junk food, and people are turning away from it.”

Wolf-Tasker also points to bread and wheat products’ fall from favour from the health set. 

“We’ve seen more and more people excluding gluten from their diets because they believe they are gluten intolerant,” she says. “At the same time, diners were telling me they could eat sourdough or pasta in Italy.” 

For Wolf-Tasker, it seemed many people were losing faith in our most essential grain.

“People came to me, worried about the chemical contamination of wheat,” she says. “Thankfully, along come farmers willing to stick their necks on the line and experiment with ancient and novel varieties of wheat. They’re turning their backs on chemicals, returning to traditional growing methods, working closely with bakers and thinking about the end user – you and me – and what great bread can actually taste like.”

Credit: Brett Stevens

Related story: Why you should store your flour in the fridge (we’re serious)

Tuerong Farm: raising the baking standard

With the establishment of a bakery at Dairy Flat Farm – the working sister farm of Wolf-Tasker’s iconic Daylesford destination restaurant Lake House, Wolf-Tasker and her team have developed a range of sourdoughs and baked goods using flour from farmers growing alternative wheat varieties.

One of those farmers is Jason Cotter. On the 160-acre Tuerong Farm on Victoria’s Mornington Peninsula, a region better known for cool-climate wine than grain, Cotter and his partner Emma Hicks grow, harvest, mill and bake more than 30 varieties of wheat, barley and rye. They cultivate both modern and heritage grains, selected for their ability to ripen in cooler, wetter climates. Many are no longer widely grown because most Australian wheat is produced in the hotter, drier regions of the country.

“Traditionally, wheat and other milling grains were grown close to where people lived,” Cotter says.

The longer growing season at Tuerong Farm helps develop more flavour in the grain. Hicks believes grain growers have too often lost sight of the end user, overlooking the qualities that matter most to cooks and consumers: flavour, nutrition and digestibility.

Among Tuerong’s most popular wheats is Rouge de Bordeaux, a French heritage hard red wheat dating back to the 1700s. When milled, it produces flour with a delicate pink hue, while the bread has a crisp crust, a deep terracotta-coloured crumb and a rich, nutty, almost spicy aroma.

Another favourite is Tritordeum, a hybrid cereal created by crossing durum wheat with a wild South American barley. It produces golden-yellow flour thanks to its naturally high lutein content, consumption of which has been associated with improved brain health, and bread with a savoury, almost slow-roasted tomato character. It has also developed a reputation for being easier to digest.

Cotter and Hicks supply flour to some of Melbourne’s best-loved bakeries, including Zelda, Loafer and Iris.

“The focus in industrial-scale grain farming is on protein levels rather than protein quality,” Cotter says. “Bread and wheat shouldn’t have got such a bad name. Some of us are trying to change that.”

Credit: Supplied

Related story: These young Victorian wheat farmers could transform your daily bread

Harry’s Paddock Hellfire flour: “a revelation”

Harry Tommerup is part of that change. He has just been named as a National Finalist in the 2026 delicious. Harvey Norman Produce Awards for his organically grown stoneground wholegrain Hellfire flour. 

“Our first harvest of Hellfire wheat was successful, and we had fantastic feedback from chefs and retail customers,” he says. 

Tommerup describes bread and pasta made with Hellfire flour as having a rich, earthy, nutty flavour and the protein structure needed for excellent pasta.

The young farmer sells most of his wheat through farmers’ markets and at the family farm gate, alongside fresh milk, pork products and eggs produced on the farm. He mills the whole grain, including the bran and nutrient-rich germ, which contains oils that can quickly oxidise.

“So we need to mill the wheat frequently to make sure the flour is always at its best,” he says.

Encouraged by the success of Hellfire, Harry has sown 36 separate one-square-metre trial plots of different heritage wheat varieties from across the world to discover which perform best in Queensland’s climate.

“I used to take wheat and flour for granted,” Tommerup says. “But the result has been so different. The flavour, the texture, the bread you can bake with it – it’s been quite a revelation.”

Related story: Run out of self-raising flour? Here’s how to make your own with just two ingredients