Why Not? Wooden Bakery

Husband and wife team Kamil and Rhonda Tannous opened the Why Not? Wooden Bakery in August 2011. The couple bakes traditional Lebanese pizza and pastries of various flavours, all baked daily and while you wait.

Rhonda’s love of cooking originates from her grandmother who loved cooking the traditional Lebanese dishes. Rhonda considers the Why Not? Wooden Bakery’s success to being that she loves engaging with people, she loves to talk, and she “cooks with love”. She would not sell to anyone something she herself would not eat. With many regular customers from as far away as Rye, Dromana, Seaford and Frankston, Rhonda and Kamil have become well known within the Lebanese community and Why Not Wooden Bakery has made a name for itself.

Dedicated to hard work and success, Rhonda arrives at the market in the early hours of the morning where she commences the preparation and baking of her traditional Lebanese pizza and pastries including the popular ‘Zaatar’ (thyme, sesame seed, olive oil on a pizza base and baked in an oven). Also popular are her traditional Lebanese meat pizzas.

Why Not Wooden Bakery’s shelves are packed with Middle Eastern groceries from rose water and pomegranate syrup to tahini, and the fridge is stocked with haloumi, and kibbeh (football-shaped patties of mince and pine nuts).

On Market days, Brunswick’s Balha’s Pastry delivers freshly made sweets such as knefeh, a semolina-biscuit sandwich filled with clotted cream and drizzled with syrup sugar.