A couple has breathed new life into an old Eyre Peninsula icon, utilising an old wood oven to create unique baked goods for the masses in a remote location.
The Colton Bakehouse, at Colton on the Flinders Highway, is operated by Mark and Corina Reynolds, who purchased the bakehouse and house on the former Colton School site, in the mid-2010s and have since made it their home as well as their business.
While the couple have only operated for two years, the iconic stall was actually the brainchild of a local surfer in the 1990s who wanted a way to make money while heading to the beach.
After years at the helm, the previous owner eventually sold the property to the Reynolds and the couple have been on a unique adventure ever since.
Neither bakers by trade, the pair are now up well before dawn every morning to get the oven warm and the mixer running, which is something they both never thought they'd be doing.
"We've owned the property for about eight years but we bought it for the location rather than the bakehouse," Corina said.
"There was always sort of a bit of a joke that we should start baking, but we had other businesses going on.
"Once we moved here full time we started seriously thinking about it and we got a collection of things we thought we could use in the bakehouse and eventually decided to give it a go."
The couple planned to trial the business in 2020 but, due to the pandemic, they waited for another year and have been baking bread, rolls and sticky fruit buns for about two years now.
The bakehouse sources its flour from the mill at Cummins and their fruit from Australian growers, which the Reynolds' say is a core value of the business.
Without any formal training, the pair have adapted their own recipes to fit their needs, with plenty of trial and error along the way.
"We've just looked at a basic bread recipe and then had to modify to our oven," Mark said.
"We try to make a basic line of four or five things that we do well and we just do that every day.
"We want consistency because people find us by word of mouth and we want them to get the product they've been told about rather than get something and think it's not right.
"We're not perfect - we've had some clangers and we've had to throw some batches to the chooks.
"Bakers are really clever, they do their trade and it takes a long time to get there so we're just happy to be doing something a bit more than cooking in the kitchen."
Although the wood oven has been at the property for almost three decades, it wasn't originally on the site and instead came from a town about 100km away.
"From what we know, the previous owner heard about this wood oven in Warramboo and approached the owners to see if they were interested in selling," Mark said.
"They told him if he could take it out and could have it.
"So brick by brick he brought the oven here in a trailer and put it back together at the property."
While the business is set up as a roadside honesty box, which allows the couple to step away from the bakehouse whenever they need, they say one of the best parts of their job is interacting with new people.
"We meet people from all over the country who might hear about us from a friend or family member who's stopped in before," Corina said.
"Just recently we met someone who bought the property off the Education Department in the 1950s.
"We get to hear stories from locals who tell us about Colton, which we find really interesting, but we also get to meet so many people from all walks of life that we wouldn't normally have the opportunity to interact with and we're able to learn so much."
With little more than a week until Easter, the couple say there could be some special treats at the stall soon.
"At Easter time we tweak our sticky fruit bun recipe to make hot cross buns," Corina said.
"We change the spices and add crosses to them - rustic crosses - I take my hat off to the bakers who do those because it's not easy!
"In the future we might branch out into biscuits or pasties, but we don't want things to get too complicated and take away from our core recipes."