Our charming flour distributor, who cheerfully rings my doorbell and greets me with his very French “Allo!“, is also an experienced pastry chef. How insane is it that I even have a flour supplier? Who gets 25kg sacks of flour – note the plural – delivered to their home? Having said that, Alain is a really nice guy, and on his last visit, he taught me something interesting about eggs. He said the industry standard for baking was the 55g egg – they allow 5g for the shell, so you’re looking at an egg mass of 50g for each “large egg” specified in a recipe.
(Edit 2011: Unfortunately Alain isn’t delivering flour anymore! We’re now buying Manildra flour from Harkola).
I put that to the test this morning with a batch of microwave lime curd. Sydney has had some pretty miserable weather recently and I was hoping that a little jar of sunshine might boost my serotonin levels. The problem was that I only had a mixed batch of duck and chicken eggs, whereas the recipe specified three standard eggs and one yolk. I figured that to be 175g of egg mass, which I was able to match in weight with one chicken and two duck eggs. The recipe was, as always, a breeze, taking less than 10 minutes from start to finish. The lime makes it quite tart and the duck eggs give it a wonderful richness. I used 150ml juice and the rind of three limes, in case anyone wants to give it a go. I’m feeling cheerier already…
Fig Jam and Lime Cordial 
You never cease to amaze me.
Why am I not surprised you have a home delivery flour distributor come pastry chef?
What I find interesting is the fact you have duck eggs.
Now you have the lime curd for filling are you going to bake some short crust pastry tarts and do a little brûlée top. I saw a photo on Wikipedia that had a Crème brûlée which was set on fire to do the toffee top, I can’t see how that would work without turning the top to liquid. I digress, what I have found in the past is a fine mist of water on top of the sugar pre torching make the whole process work better and faster.
Thanks for the tip, Moo. Yes, lime tart is next on the list..
OMG Celia, you are the best! Do you think he could deliver his flour to my house? I live in the Manly side of town……How cool would that be! x
Keri, give Alain a call, he’s a very nice man! I do believe he delivers all over Sydney (although you might need to buy a couple of bags). Hehe…be warned though, you might end up with a house full of flour like the rest of us.. :)
Edit: Sadly, Alain is no longer in the flour business!
Hi Celia. I’ve recently moved up to Sydney from melbourne, and I’ve been struggling to find suppliers of quality baking flour! I’ve come to the conclusion that I was spoiled down in Melbourne… ;)
I stumbled upon your site via google searching, but the link to alain’s contact details doesn’t seem to work. I probably won’t be able to buy enough for him to deliver, but I’d be happy to pick it up from him.
Thanks so much!!
Adrian, I’m sorry to disappoint, but Alain’s no longer in the flour business, which is why his details have been removed. I currently buy my flour from Harkola in Auburn – they have a very nice Manildra bakers and extra strong bakers’ flour in 12.5kg bags (very reasonably priced too!). They also have bags of rye, wholemeal, ultra-white, pizza flour and sharps.
Hopefully Harkola will be getting some of the Ben Furney Mills flour soon as well. I wrote a post with contact details here.
Thanks so much!! I think I’ll have to make the trek out rather soon…
One more thing – they have a lot of flour portioned out into 2kg or so bags, so you don’t need to buy full bags of rye etc if you don’t want to. There’s also a section which sells breadmaking goodies – little bags of malt flour, grain mixes, bread improvers etc. Have fun! :)
Great! Do you have any recommended ‘must-buys’ while i’m there? Fig jam perhaps?
No “must-buys”, but in baking terms, there’s always a good price on bulk supplies like parchment paper and foil! Have fun!