Award-Winning Sourdough: Pain au Levain
21 May 2026
The loaf that still defines us
Last week, our Pain au Levain was named Best Local Hospitality Product of the Year 2026 at the Waikato NZ Hospo Awards.
A pretty special moment for a loaf that’s been part of Volare for a long time.
The awards themselves returned this year thanks to the team at Table Talks, bringing the hospitality community back together after several quiet years. It made for a genuinely great night out for our team – a chance to celebrate, catch up with other local hospitality people, and spend time in the new BNZ Theatre in Hamilton, which was pretty impressive in itself.
Mostly though, it just felt good to see the Waikato hospitality scene all in one room again.
There’s a lot happening here at the moment. Good food, good operators, good people. It’s exciting to see where hospitality in the Waikato is heading.
We were also in very good company in our category, with runner-up honours going to Kaipaki Dairies and Duck Island Ice Cream.
For us, the award also felt like recognition for the thing that got us into baking all those years ago: sourdough in all its glorious simplicity.
No commercial yeast.
No preservatives.
No shortcuts.
A dough that's slowly fermented over many hours using wild yeast and natural bacteria. Time does most of the work.
That fermentation develops flavour naturally the subtle tang, caramelised crust, open crumb, and depth that fast-made bread just doesn’t have.
It also changes the bread itself.
During fermentation, natural enzymes begin breaking down starches and gluten before baking, which is why many people find long-fermented sourdough gentler on the gut and easier to digest than heavily processed supermarket bread.
And then there’s the keeping quality.
Good sourdough lasts. It toasts properly the next day. It holds up under eggs, soup, sandwiches, olive oil, butter, or whatever else you throw at it. It’s a working loaf – the kind of bread that earns its place in the kitchen.
Making bread this way is slower and harder to scale, but it’s still the way we believe bread should be made.
This award was a nice reminder that people still value that too.
Our Pain au Levain is available online now as both a Batard (sliced of whole) and as a Tin loaf for home delivery or click & collect.