Time, Crust and Toorak Road: Inside Woodfrog Bakery at Tok H Centre

On Toorak Road, the morning rush is rarely only about coffee. At Tok H Centre, a compact Woodfrog Bakery counter fills with people collecting loaves that still smell of the oven: white sourdough with a blistered crust, seeded pumpkin bread, baguettes with a nutty snap, and almond croissants that have already developed a quiet reputation of their own.

Woodfrog is no longer a single St Kilda shop. It is a Melbourne bakery group built on one stubborn idea: good bread cannot be hurried. The Toorak store is the local face of that idea — a takeaway bakery for residents, office workers and weekend shoppers who want proper sourdough without driving across town.

A neighbourhood bakery on one of Melbourne’s best-known streets

Woodfrog Bakery Toorak sits at Shop 24, Tok H Centre, 459 Toorak Road, Toorak VIC 3142. It is a small, practical shop rather than a sit-down café. Reviews consistently describe it as takeaway only: baskets of bread, a pastry cabinet, a short queue, and then you are back on Toorak Road with a loaf still warm enough to fog the paper bag.

That is part of its appeal. Toorak Village already has its share of polished food shops. Woodfrog’s role here is simpler. It is the place you duck into before Woolworths, after a medical appointment, or on the walk home, when you want bread that will still toast beautifully on Thursday.

Opening hours at this store are:

Monday to Friday: 7:00am – 6:30pm
Saturday and Sunday: 7:00am – 5:00pm

Public holiday hours can differ, so it is worth checking the Woodfrog app or website before a long weekend.

From a vacant furniture shop in St Kilda

Woodfrog began in 2011–2012 in a large vacant furniture shop on Barkly Street, St Kilda. Co-founders Danny Berkovitch and baker Jarrod Hack set out to make bread without the usual shortcuts. Hack had already worked at Baker D. Chirico in Melbourne and Sonoma in Sydney. The brief was plain: long fermentation, high hydration, hand shaping, and loaves sold the day they were baked.

The name has a slightly wry ring, but the work is serious. In 2021 the original St Kilda bakery was named best bakery in the City of Port Phillip in a Leader “Delicious Local” campaign. By then the business had already spread into suburbs including Toorak, Malvern, Kew, Brighton, Elsternwick and South Melbourne. Production later expanded through a central bakery in Moorabbin, while the retail shops kept the same loaf list and the same refusal to rush the dough.

Jarrod Hack remains closely identified with the baking. Dima Bensky later joined as chief executive as the group grew into a multi-site retailer with wholesale accounts and an online pre-order system. The Toorak shop is one of more than twenty Melbourne pick-up points.

The ingredient they will not skip: time

Woodfrog’s bakers like to compare dough to wine grapes. Both need time to mature before flavour appears. Their sourdoughs ferment for about 28 hours. Other doughs sit for 18 to 20 hours, depending on the loaf. The result is a thin, caramelised crust, an open moist crumb, and bread that stays pleasant for days rather than collapsing by the next morning.

The wheat sourdough starter began as rye flour and water. It was fed until it settled, then kept going on a mix of wholewheat and white flour. The bakery has said the starter is years old and is fed several times a day. A separate starter is used for the spelt loaves.

There is no commercial yeast in the pure sourdoughs. Naturally occurring yeasts and lactobacillus do the work: carbon dioxide for lift, acid for that gentle sour note. Woodfrog is blunt about supermarket “sourdough” that is boosted with baker’s yeast and vinegar. Their version is slower, wetter and harder to handle. High-moisture dough has to be mixed, shaped and baked with care. Steam escaping through razor scores is what opens the crumb. Loaves go into a hot oven — around 240°C — every morning and are sold that day.

The bread itself is kept simple. There is no oil, no soy flour and no added sugar in the standard loaves. A small amount of ascorbic acid is used in the sourdoughs to support the long ferment. Most of the breads are vegan. The exceptions are challah and fruit buns (free-range egg), the honey oat loaf (honey), and the cakes and pastries (butter).

Customers notice the toast. Woodfrog likes to say a good slice should shatter loudly enough to wake the household. That is not marketing fluff if you have had their white loaf on day three: the crust still snaps; the crumb is still creamy rather than chalk-white.

The loaves that keep people coming back

The Toorak cabinet changes with the bake, but the core range is consistent across the group.

White sourdough is the house loaf: golden blistered crust, soft open crumb, a light sour taste. It is the loaf people buy two of because the first disappears as toast.

Spelt is the other regular favourite. Spelt is an older form of wheat with a softer gluten and less fructose than many modern wheats. Woodfrog notes that it is still wheat, but many customers who struggle with ordinary loaves find it easier. One Toorak reviewer said the 100 per cent spelt loaf was so popular with her children that she had to buy two at a time.

Pumpkin is an original Woodfrog recipe: roasted pumpkin, linseed and soaked soy beans in a seeded sourdough. It is moist, toasts well, and sits as comfortably under cheese as it does under honey.

Olive is packed with Australian-grown Kalamata and green olives. Soir — French for evening — is the darker loaf, a blend of wholemeal wheat, wholemeal rye and malted barley. Honey oat is the low-GI, seed-heavy option, built on oat bran, crushed wheat, linseed, sesame and sunflower. Wholemeal is a 50/50 white and wholemeal sourdough given an even longer ferment, around 32 hours.

There are heavier ryes too. Light rye carries toasted caraway and a good share of wholemeal wheat and rye — the soup loaf. Dark rye is denser still, with a high proportion of wholemeal rye, puffed rice, oat bran and some spelt. Woodfrog tells you to slice it thinly, about 9mm, or it will not toast.

Fruit loaf is dense with figs, apricots, golden raisins and currants soaked in orange blossom water, plus a little cinnamon. Focaccia is long-fermented with olive oil and rosemary. Bagels are aged sourdough styles, not boiled New York copies, finished with seeds; the multiseed version uses Maldon salt, caraway, linseed, poppy and sesame.

Then there is the baguette. It is not sourdough. It is a long-fermented yeasted dough from a poolish starter, with spelt in the mix for a sweet nutty flavour and a crust that bites. Eat it warm with proper butter and the Paris joke writes itself. Locals argue about whether it is the most French baguette in Melbourne. Woodfrog is happy to let them.

Challah — enriched with free-range egg — appears as rolls and, at some sites, as a braided loaf. Availability can vary by store.

Pastry that takes three days, not three hours

The bread is the backbone. The pastry case is why people linger at the glass.

Croissants are made over three days. They are flaky, with an open honeycomb crumb and a nutty flavour that is not simply sweet. Pain au chocolat, berry Danish, date scones, spelt scones and fruit buns sit beside them. Babka is laminated like croissant dough, then twisted with chocolate ganache and chocolate buttons. It contains nuts.

The almond croissant has its own following. A Toorak customer compared the frangipane filling favourably with Tivoli Road’s — high praise in this part of Melbourne. It is dusted, packed with toasted flakes, and rich without being cloying.

Hot cross buns return in season, soft, spiced and generously fruited. The group also runs occasional late-afternoon “happy hour” specials across stores, typically late weekday afternoons, which is useful if you pass Tok H on the way home.

Almost all of this is baked fresh daily. The Toorak shop is a retail point, not a full production bakery, so the range on the shelf reflects what has come in that morning. Popular lines sell out. That is the point of a bake-and-sell model.

Who shops here, and why it works in Toorak

Toorak is not short of bakeries. Laurent sits further along Toorak Road. Independent cafés serve toast made from someone else’s loaf. Woodfrog’s pitch is different: a specialist bread counter inside a local centre, with the same product you would find at the original St Kilda shop.

It suits households that eat a lot of toast. It suits people after a lower-fructose or higher-fibre loaf. It suits anyone who has been disappointed by supermarket sourdough that goes stale in a day. Parents mention the spelt. Pastry people mention the almond croissant. Regulars mention that the bread still eats well later in the week.

Service comments are mixed, as they often are at busy takeaway bakeries. Most customers come for the product. The shop is small; patience at peak times helps. Bring a bag if you can. Like many inner-Melbourne food retailers, Woodfrog has leaned towards reducing single-use plastic.

Pre-order is the quiet advantage. Through the Woodfrog website and the MyPreorder app you can reserve loaves and pastries for Toorak pickup, which matters on Saturday mornings when the white sourdough and baguettes move quickly.

A Melbourne bakery that still bakes like a small one

What began as two bakers in an empty St Kilda furniture shop is now a familiar name across the south-east and inner suburbs. The risk with that kind of growth is sameness. Woodfrog’s defence is process: the same long ferment, the same hand shaping, the same refusal to put oil and sugar into the bread to make life easier.

At Tok H Centre that philosophy arrives as something ordinary and daily. A loaf under your arm. A croissant for the car. A baguette for dinner. Toorak Road supplies the setting. The bakery supplies the crust.

If you have not tried it, start with the white sourdough and a baguette. If you already buy the white, try the pumpkin or the soir. If pastry is the point, the almond croissant is the one people argue about.

Visit Woodfrog Bakery Toorak

Woodfrog Bakery Toorak
Shop 24, Tok H Centre
459 Toorak Road
Toorak VIC 3142
Australia

Phone: (03) 9077 5440
Email: info@woodfrogbakery.com.au
Website: https://woodfrogbakery.com.au
Online pre-order / pickup: https://woodfrogbakery.mypreorder.com
Instagram: @woodfrogbakery
Facebook: Woodfrog Bakery

Opening hours
Monday–Friday: 7:00am – 6:30pm
Saturday–Sunday: 7:00am – 5:00pm
Public holiday hours may differ.

The Toorak shop is takeaway focused. Pre-order through the Woodfrog app or website if you need a particular loaf on a busy morning.