Sourdough Master Quentin Berthonneau Starts a Baking School in Preston

Oji House, by Quentin Berthonneau, marks a sharp shift in practice for the French-born boulangier and pastry chef. The business only sells baked goods on Fridays – the rest of the time, it’s a school.

Berthonneau was just 24 when he opened his first bakery, a busy, relentless operation. He went on to teach at prestigious French sourdough school L’Ecole Internationale de Boulangerie, consult for more than 70 bakeries across France (plus Sydney’s Flour & Stone and AP Bakery) and captain the Australian team at the 2025 Panettone World Championships in Italy.

“I think my experience helped me realise everything I didn’t want to do,” Berthonneau says. “When I opened Oji House, I knew I didn’t want to do retail seven days a week. I knew I wanted to teach, and I knew I wanted to help the baking industry in Australia, because there’s nowhere to properly learn sourdough baking.”

Though geared towards industry professionals, Berthonneau’s masterclasses – 2.5-day intensives on topics like sourdough fundamentals, baguettes and extensible doughs, brioche, and panettone – are open to all. On Fridays, the roster of baked goods for sale includes four core breads (rye, table loaves, baguettes and a nut-heavy gluten-free option), alongside his signature sourdough shokupan. There’s also a concise line-up of viennoiserie – including croissants and a malted pain au chocolat – plus a rotating “grand levain”: a large-format, naturally leavened showpiece such as pandoro or panettone.

“I love the teaching side of it,” he says. “But I also need to have the space to express my creativity and do the things that I would never be able to do anywhere else.”

Natural fermentation sits at the core of Berthonneau’s approach. “There’s so much fat and sugar in everything. That’s not what I want to do,” he says. “When I create a product, I want to tick every box: nutrition, locally sourced ingredients, digestibility, texture, flavour, shelf life.”

Five years in the making, Oji House was brought to life with the help of a Kickstarter campaign that raised more than $30,000. “I would have opened Oji regardless,” he says, “but the support helped ease the financial pressure and build a community around it.”

Originally, Berthonneau envisioned Oji House as a space primarily for workshops, using a pre-order model for people to shop. “People are happy to pre-order panettone or pain au chocolat,” he says. “But not their everyday bread – that’s why we’re open on Fridays.”

He knows the model won’t appeal to everyone. “Most of the negative feedback is about the structure – people saying I should open on weekends, do wholesale, lower prices,” he says. “But I’ve learned from my mistakes. I’ll stand up for myself and say no, because I know where I want to be.”

And, for Berthonneau, the goal is bigger than a bakery. “I’m an artisan. I love my craft,” he says. “I’ll do anything I can to make the industry better, for myself, for bakers, for millers, for farmers.”

Oji House
1/78 High Street, Preston
No phone 

Hours
Friday 9am–5pm 

ojihouse.com
@oji_house