Now he has won the 18 to 25 section of the big state bakery competition, NSW Bake Skills, held this year in Wollongong.

It means he’s in for the national final in Melbourne in September.

He had to make sourdough loaves, croissants and baguettes.

The real star turn was the sourdough. To do it, you have to make a “starter” dough without using the yeast which is essential to other breads. For a starter dough, flour mixed with water is left in the open atmosphere and the bacteria in the air creates the yeast. From the starter many loaves can be made. Each starter is fed with more flour and water over years.

It is said that every type of sourdough bread tastes different depending on where it comes from because the nature of the air is different everywhere.

There is famously San Francisco Sourdough – and now Glen Innes Sourdough.

Is there a market in Glen Innes for sourdough bread? 

In the fancier cities with their hipsters and health obsessives, there certainly is, according to Khai. There is a fashion there for “artisan” breads, and he thinks the taste for it is growing in country Australia.

“Tastes are changing,” he said. “In the city, young people want ‘artisan’ breads and now we have a few customers who are asking for it here”.

Khai has only formally been learning to bake for five years,with an apprenticeship two years ago. But he clearly picked up techniques and tips at his mother’s heels in the bakery and then working on afternoons while he was in school.

When he was asked what the secret of his bread was, he said: Eileen Halloran, the owner of Smeaton’s and a pastry chef who teaches him.

Because he’s a baker, his hours are odd – from midnight to 9 am.

But he says: “I think it’s a really rewarding job. Every day I come in and make the bread and it’s really satisfying”.

Even more rewarding if he wins in Melbourne.