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Tag: bakery

  • Gulburet – bakery and farm shop

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    I recently joined a workshop called Visual storytelling – creating compelling multimedia pieces at NORDphotography on Inderøy in Norway with Bob Sacha as a teacher. The director of NORDphotography, Elisabeth Nordeng Aanes, asked us before the course started what we wanted to make a video about. Since there are many small-scale producers of foods and drinks nearby, I told her that I wanted to go to Gulburet – a combined cattle farm, brewery, farm shop and bakery.

    Having arrived at 6 a.m. one morning, I was met by the friendly owner of the bakery, Liv Elin Olsen, who had just said goodbye to one of her employees who would bring fresh bakery products to a food fair in the city of Trondheim.

    Gulburet has got its name because it was painted yellow ages ago and gul in Norwegian means yellow, while bur is short for stabbur, which was used for storing food. It is located at the Værdal Østre farm where Liv Elin and her husband have about 20 cows, a brewery, a bakery, a farm shop and a cafe. The three last ones face the idyllic courtyard of the farm where the barn is located on the left and the farmhouse on the right, while in the middle, guests at the cafe can enjoy fresh bakery products with tea or coffee in the sun or in the shade of big trees according to their wishes. Inside the farm shop, both Liv Elin’s bakery products and products from many other small-scale producers can be found.

    Liv Elin told me that although she has been making bakery products for many years, she’s still not a baker, she’s just baking, having never finished an apprenticeship. However, she has been baking for more than 20 years at this farm and served home-made bread to their guests. Since they wanted to buy the bread, she started baking bread in the farmhouse and selling it at Gulburet in 2010, while the bakery next to the farm shop was built in the winter of 2015/2016. Consequently, when customers enter the shop, they are surrounded by pleasant fragrances from the bakery, making them want to stay longer and enjoy dishes like sandwiches, pastries and confectionery from the cafe. Beer made by Liv Elin’s husband Arve and aquavit , a dry Scandinavian liquor flavored with caraway, made at another farm, are also available.

    When Liv Elin had started preparing dough, she went out to the barn and returned with a bucket of milk from the cows, which had been milked just before. She poured milk with no pasteurisation or homogenisation onto the dough. The bread would be baked at a temperature of about 180C and there were no requirements for any processing of the milk.

    After the dough had been kneaded and leavened, she weighed certain amounts of dough and formed them into sausage shapes. Next, she put them in a tray filled with water, rolled them in a tray filled with a mixture of flaxseeds, sunflower seeds and sesame seeds and finally put them in bread tins. After leavening, she put the bread tins in an oven and took them out again when they had been baked, filling the bakery with a pleasant fragrance.

    In fact, she had let wholemeal wheat flour and the seeds be immersed in water since the evening before. This is an old technique, which has apparently been forgotten by most bakers, where the grains and the seeds absorb humidity such that the resulting bread gets more tasty and has a longer shelf life. The next day, she would mix it with broth, finely milled flour, salt, water and yeast, making dough in a kneader.

    Liv Elin let me know that you have to let the dough know who’s the boss and use a firm grip, treating the dough like a living creature. Actually, baker’s yeast consist of myriads of tiny organisms, which she instead presumably thinks of as one. When she had placed a large clump of dough in a plastic box and put a lid on it, I forgot about it until she said that the dough was in bad mood. In fact, the yeast had increased the volume of the dough so much that the lid had been lifted up and dough was very slowly falling towards the table. It was interesting to watch the dough forming lots of bonds, trying to prevent the dough from falling down. In order to let it get in good mood again, she applied finely milled flour to the dough and kneaded it by hand such that the flour entered the dough and the yeast would have something to eat.

    She made a bread called Jessenkak where Jessen is the last name of an auctioneer who bought large amounts of the same type of bread and gave them as gifts to family and friends, while kak is a local word for bread. A recipe in Norwegian can be found here.

    Liv Elin worked as a confectioner too, using a wooden roller to flatten the dough, next she used a spatula to apply a thin layer of chocolate on the top of the dough, folding the dough and flattening it again by means of the wooden roller. Then, cutting it into stripes by means of a roller cutter. Finally, she tied the stripes of dough in knots, forming a flat, figure-of-eight-shape, which is called kringle in Norwegian. Another time, she treated the dough in the same way until she had cut it into stripes. Then, she formed into Danish pastries, instead.

    As I’ve experienced so many times before, it’s always a great pleasure to enter a bakery where an artisan makes bakery products manually, almost always wth attention to detail and with loving care. Not surprisingly, I once viisted a baker who had forgotten to add salt to his breads and Liv Elin had once forgotten to add sugar to her pastries. The next day she found a note in the farm shop: tired baker equals pastries with no sugar. Liv Elin preferred to use a pun in Norwegian: annsleiskringle instead of aniskringle.

    After Liv Elin had finished baking aroud noon, I went to the arts shop located a few minutes walk from the bakery where there was a small exhibition of paintings, glassware and textiles, all of it for sale.

    In the evening, I showed parts of what I had done to Bob, who told me that I needed to film some of Liv Elin’s work from other angles, nearer, further away and so on. I went back the next day, following his advice in order to make as good a visual story as possible.

    Everyone who’s travelling between Trondheim and Steinkjer are advised to go to Gulburet, enter the farm shop, sense pleasant fragrances from the bakery, buy various dishes in the cafe and sit outside in the garden if the weather permits, alternatively sit inside on the floor above the farm shop. Beer tastings and dinners are occasionally arranged for groups. A special type of dinner is called 905 and 1905, where the last number is the year when Norway got independent and 905 is 1000 years before. Then, guests are served typical dishes from 905 when Scandinavian vikings imported exotic foods from the Levant and from 1905.

    Both Saga and Gulburet are members of Den gyldne omvei, meaning the Golden detour, where visitors can find accommodation, places to eat, art exhibitions, farm shops and even more.

     

    TheBakery

  • Skog bakery workshop

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    Besides going to a chocolate-making course, I also joined a bread-making course at Skog bakery workshop where the owner, Anne Lise Tharaldsen works as both baker and confectioner. Actually, it felt good going to a bakery course at this bakery since she’s using spelt, a type of rye called svedjerug and emmer flour from Økologisk spesialkorn, one of whose owners I had already met at a field trial of growing cereals. The farmers, who are cultivating the cereals from which Anne Lise is using flour to make her products, let their harvests grow slowly without using artificial fertilisers. According to Anne Lise, the resulting flour is easily workable, all nutrients are present and it gives tasty products.

    As participants at the course, we should make sourdough bread based on flour from spelt, besides mash from a local brewery  The fermentation starter or mother dough, which is used to leaven the breads,  was reused. In fact, Anne Lise keeps it alive by giving it flour occasionally. She weighed the required amount of flour and poured it into a kneader. After having added water and the mother dough, she started the kneader, freeing us from the long and arduous work of kneading the dough.

    While waiting for the dough to finish, Anne Lise showed us her bakery, which looked very tidy and modern. Instead, she told us that the building in which her bakery was situated, had been built recently, while she had bought the kneader, the bakery oven and various bits and pieces second-hand. She’s very concerned about preserving biological diversity and she has included a ladybird in her logo signifying that ladybirds eat aphids if the plants aren’t sprayed with insecticides. She’s also using organic butter from Rørosmeieriet, organic cocoa butter and cocoa powder.

    When the dough was finished, we took it out of the kneader and cut it into parts weighing what was required to make one bread or one bread roll. Finally, we shaped the dough manually and put it into moulds, looking like baskets consisting of concentric circles. After having left the pieces of dough in a chamber for leavening for some time, we took them out again and put them in an oven by means of a long-handed shovel. After some time, we took the breads and bread rolls out of the oven again, but not before measuring the temperature inside some of them. If the internal temperature was too low, they had to stay longer in the oven. Some of the more experienced students also knocked on the base of the bread, listening for a special sound, indicating that it was ready. Interestingly, the bakers at the Porta confectionery and bakery in the town of Gonnosfanadiga in Sardinia did the same.

    Finally, after having paid Anne Lise the course fee, we could go back home with a selection of delicious breads and bread rolls, all of which were tasty for the approximately two weeks it took to eat all of them.

     

  • Molnár Csaba bakery

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    While we were having lunch in Hidegség (Valea Rece), my guide realised that we were close to the bakery of Molnár Csaba. Since he knew him, he called him and he accepted our visit immediately.

    Molnár Csaba was initially running a meat processing company, but due to strict regulations and some minor violations, he closed down the company and founded a bakery instead.

    Upon entering the bakery, the female workers were finishing lunch and preparing to go back to their heavy work. One of their tasks was to mash potatoes in a meat grinder, a light but repetitive task. However, when all the potatoes had been mashed, they had to carry a container full of potatoes to the meat grinder in order to repeat the mashing. They also had to peel the potatoes manually and put the mashed potatoes in the dough.

    During our visit, one of the workers was tending a machine, which was sifting flour, else it would form clumps during preparation of the dough in a kneading machine.

    The bakery had 8 wood-fired ovens, all of which needed to be filled with pieces of bread dough. A group of female workers and one male worker were doing this job.

    When the ovens were hot enough, a long-handled tool was used to take out the embers from the oven, then a mop was pulled over the base of the oven to remove any remaining embers. The dough of each bread had already been prepared and lay in separate bowls. When an oven was ready to be filled, one woman was standing at the opening of the oven. A man held a long-handled shovel on which she poured flour, while at the same time the women took out the dough of the bowls and kneaded each piece of dough expertly, then put it on the shovel. Finally, the first woman poured water on the dough and the man led the shovel into the oven and pulled it back quickly in order to let the dough stay in the oven. This procedure was repeated until the oven was full, then it was repeated seven times more, once for each oven.

    When the breads were taken out of the ovens, they were covered by a black crust, which had to be removed. The female workers used one machine to clean the bottom of the bread and another one for cleaning the top. Besides, they also needed to grate the breads to remove any burnt remains.

    All of the women worked surprisingly hard in a very hot workplace., while the one man seemed to have a lighter workload.

    The bakery is owned by the Molnár family and they sell bread within a radius of 14 km from the bakery

  • Su Forru ‘e su Pani bakery and confectionery

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    Islands are known to house plants and animals, which don’t grow or live anywhere else. That is, they have a large biological diversity. A corollary to biological diversity on islands is cultural diversity on islands and the bakery “Su Forru ‘e su Pani” of Efisio Carta located in the town of Teulada in the south of Sardinia seems to confirm it.

    We enter the “Su Forru ‘e su Pani” bakery about 9 in the evening where the Carta family, consisting of Efisio, his wife Assunta, their daughter Debora and her young daughter Vanessa together with a baker called Angelo, are making a bread called “su coccoi pintau”, turning dough into shapes like hedgehogs, flowers, crowns, etc.

    Working from about 8 in the evening till about 6 in the morning, dozens of breads, bread rolls, and ritual breads, like coccoi, originally made for the most important religious feast days are made 6 nights a week. They also make a ritual bread called “the bread of the dead”, a fragrant, soft bread in memory of the dead to be shared with friends on All Souls’ Day, 2 November.

    Coccoi is a typical Sardinian bread made for anniversaries, ceremonies, weddings, baptisms, and Easter. Making this type of bread require, after having quickly turned the dough into a complex shape by hand and a knife, a rapid sequence of cuts with a pair of scissors at predetermined points and with regular positions. Although these cuts are made for decoration, they also contribute to uniform baking, graduated surface colours with more or less intense nuances, and making the bread crunchy.

    Little Vanessa, who is only 7 years old, is turning dough into complex shapes, deftly using her small hands. Her grandfather, Efisio, also started working in a bakery when he was a child, imitating the movements of his mother and grandmother. Originally, only women were baking in Sardinia, but now it seems like more men than women are working as bakers.

    They also make a round and soft bread called “Sa Tunda”, which is typical for the town of Teulada. It’s a sourdough bread made from semolina shaped like a star with 7 points, one for every day of the week in order to mark the time between each time a bread was made. Another explanation is that it was baked by women whose husbands should spend a week in the mountains and they could eat one point every day.

    At midnight, when only Efisio and Angelo are still working more or less continuously, manipulating, stretching, rolling, cutting, decorating, and flattening dough, marking their products with a stamp and putting them on a wooden board, covering them with cloths and letting them leaven in peace, putting the finished shapes in an oven by means of a long-handed shovel, taking them out when they are baked, putting the necessary ingredients in the kneader in order to produce more dough, etc. Briefly, they are working hard.

    While Angelo is working quietly, Efisio is working dexterously and quickly, while talking at the same time. He has been working as a baker for about 40 years and he started making breads when he was 12. While he is busily shaping the dough, he is talking about how he is canoeing, fishing squid, and making stone statues of local rocks in his spare time. Thus, he’s shaping dough at work and stone off work like a sculptor. He also looks younger than his age and he’s obviously full of energy, mental and physical.

    We leave some time after midnight and come back next morning, enter the shop next to their bakery, where Debora, the young daughter of Efisio and Assunta is selling the last “breads of the dead”, while the rest has already been sold.

    Only the the fragrance of the breads is remaining together with a feeling of a pleasant expectation because tomorrow the shop will be full of other fragrant delicacies.

  • Mateo bakery and confectionery

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    Entering the Mateo bakery and confectionery on the outskirts of Laguardia early in the morning, we were met by a pleasant smell from freshly made bread and pastries. Inside, the owner Josean Mateo and his assistant Pedro de Sorzano had been working since one o’clock in the morning. Both of them willingly showed us their way of working using a combination of manual work and machines like kneaders and dough rollers. Having kneaded the dough in a kneader, they took out a part of the dough, cut out small pieces and formed them manually into spheres before putting them in a machine which shaped them into long, thin, and cylindrical shapes. Then, they laid them on metal boards with grooves where there was space for the dough to leaven. Having finished a set of metal boards and put each one in a rack, they covered everything with a cloth such that the leavening would be left in peace.

    They also showed us their wood-fired oven, the only one in this area, where they regularly put big pieces of firewood into a chamber below the oven where lots of breads were baked at the same time on different drawers. In fact, they used some kind of height-adjustable roller in order to put the the breads to be baked into the oven and to take out the finished ones after baking.

    They make various kinds of bread, which are called oil bread, water bread, barra, and baguette. For instance, they can vary the consistency of the breads just by increasing or decreasing the amount of water in the dough, varying the shape of the dough, time and duration in the oven, etc.

    During our visit, locals entered the bakery, talked with the bakers, took some breads and put coins in a box as payment.

    They also make more than 20 types of biscuits. Since sweets are a staple in the religious processions of the region and there are many religious festivals in Spain, there is a large demand. In fact, they make one specialty for each holiday.

    Both Josean and Pedro started as apprentices when they were in their early teens. Since they are in their fifties, they have both worked about 40 years. Anyway, both of them looked surprisingly well given that they had been up working almost the whole night.

  • The Rednic bakery

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    The bakery of Anuta Rednic is located in the village of Berbesti in the Mara valley. It has an impressive wayside crucifix with remarkable wooden sculptures dating back to the eighteenth century.

    Anuta founded her bakery in 2002, and she started with two wood-fired and one natural  gas-fired oven. She’s producing breads in different sizes ranging from 300 g to 700 g using flour from the Oas region west of Maramures. Introduction of EU regulations in 2007 has made her business quite difficult and she’s struggling with competition from supermarkets, which sell bread at lower prices than hers. Anuta prefers to use the wood-fired ovens instead of the natural gas-fired one because firewood is cheaper than natural gas.

    Unfortunately, many locals prefer to eat white bread to traditional bread because they make their own bread at home. Her peak season lasts from July to September when most of the locals are working outside on the meadows. Then, they don’t have time to bake their own bread and have to buy bread from Anuta’s bakery and other small bakeries.

    When we entered the bakery, one man and two women were busy working. The man was sliding freshly baked breads out of the oven by means of a peel, that is a shovel-like tool with a long handle, while the women removed the burnt upper crust with brushes before placing the breads in baskets.

    The women also formed dough manually into breads to be baked, while the man put flour, butter, sugar, and water into a kneader in order to make more dough.

  • The Turean bakery

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    This small bakery is run by Maria Turean and her husband. He was working in a bakery in the village of Sura Mica before the revolution in 1989, but it was closed afterwards. Some time later he opened a small bakery in the same village, consisting of a small shop and a traditional oven. Since Romania joined the EU, he had to close down the old, traditional oven and install a new one because of EU regulations.

    Arriving early in the morning, we could hear somebody hitting something. After having entered the bakery, it was seen to be caused by two men who were hitting big, round and freshly baked breads with sticks. In fact, this seems to be a holdover from the Transylvanian way of making bread where the top of the breads are baked till the crust has burnt, and getting rid of it by hitting it repeatedly with sticks.

    At the same time, other bakers started making cozonac, actually a sweet bread whose dough consists of flour, eggs, milk, butter, sugar and salt. They started by placing some dough on a workbench and making it flat by means of a rolling pin. Then, they covered the dough with a layer of their own nutty mixture before rolling the dough around itself until it formed a long cylinder. Since it was so long, two bakers had to lift the dough into a metal trough. After leavening, the cakes were baked and ready for sale. Actually, this way of making the cozonac is a continuation of how the Saxons in Transylvania used to make it.

    The owners kindly gave us a cozonac, a tasty cake which is very popular among Romanians for all sorts of celebrations.

  • Brødbakerne

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    Having passed the bakery and baker’s shop called Brødbakerne or The Bread Bakers in English to and from work in addition to buying their delicious products, it was finally time to pay them a visit. The occasion was a multimedia course where everyone had to conduct and record an interview together with taking photos.

    The owner and founder, Jesper Pedersen, started his education as a baker when he was 15 and has been working with bakery products ever since. Having obtained his craft certificate and worked for some time in Denmark, he came to Norway in the early 2000s since there was more work available here. Since his cousin was working at Åpent bakeri, whose bakers have lifted the selection and quality of bread in Norway to a level not known here before, he was interviewed in the afternoon and started working there the next morning. Åpent bakeri has also educated a diverse range of highly skilled bakers who have gone on to to found bakeries in various places of Norway. Another highly skilled baker, the above mentioned Jesper, founded the bakery Brødbakerne at Jar in Oslo about 5 years ago together with another baker. In the beginning, they made breads which they brought to restaurants. However, due to their delicious bakery products, they also set up a baker’s shop next to their bakery in addition to founding another combined bakery and baker’s shop at Skøyen about 2 years ago. In fact, the name The Bread Bakers only tells part of the story since they also make pastries tasting so good that I have to force myself to avoid eating them or risk gaining weight. Having witnessed how they are making Danish pastries, adding sugar and vast quantities of butter to the dough, I think this is a wise choice.

    The photos show how Danish pastries are made. After having made dough using sugar, flour, yeast and water, the dough is rolled flat and covered with a thick layer of butter, the dough is folded again before being rolled again by means of a machine. Folding and rolling the dough several times, in the end, layers of dough and butter will be on top of each other like the pages of a book with the dough also forming the cover. After cooling in order to slow down leavening, Jesper and his employee Vladimir from Estonia, cut up the dough in triangles, which they rolled into cylinders. After leavening, their products would be baked and be ready for sale in the shop located next to the bakery.

    Vladimir also covered parts of the same dough with a thin layer of chocolate together with sugar. After having folded and rolled the dough, he cut it into rectangles, which he skillfully tied in knots before covering them with egg yolk together with a mix of sugar and cinnamon.

    Having watched quite a few bakers and confectioners a work, I’ve always been impressed at their level of dexterity and all of them making it seem like their work is easy. However, I had to ask Jesper about what he felt about his work and I told him that my impression is that although they are doing more or less the same every day, their work will never be routine. Moreover, the ambient temperature and the humidity will also affect how they treat the dough. Yes, he told me, depending on the ambient temperature we have to cool the water on hot days, even adding ice cubes when we are making Danish pastries, while we may be using tepid water on cold days. Depending on the humidity, we also have to vary the baking time of our products. Although our customers think that our products are excellent, we can always detect changes and small defects, meaning that no two breads are alike, even though they are made from the same dough. Not to speak of bread made from two different doughs, which will always be different. Since their products are hand made, Jesper told me that he never feels like he has made perfect products and that he should always have improved something. For example, limited capacity in the ovens may lead to that their products won’t be baked immediately, while limited space leads to that the bakers have to wait for each other.

    In addition to using water, flour, salt and yeast for their breads, their guiding principle is to let the making of their products take its time, meaning 6-7 hours from preparing the dough to a finished bread although this will vary in accordance with the type of bread.

    A visit to the bread bakers

  • Roiati bakery

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    Roberto Roiati, being a master baker, showed us how he made a cake called Colomba Pasquale in Italian, or Easter Dove in English. The Colomba Pasquale dates from the 1930s when an enterprising Milanese director conceived of the idea of making an Easter version of the Christmas cake called Panettone.

    We entered the bakery of Roberto and Cinzia Roiati at 5.30 in the morning, finding Roberto sitting at his desk, probably filling out bills for his customers, having already started a machine kneading the dough. However, after having introduced us, he started adding flour and water to the dough, which after having been kneaded into a homogeneous mass, he added yeast and sugar. Having reassured that the each added ingredient had been completely mixed with the dough, he proceeded by adding eggs and finally butter.

    When the dough was ready, Roberto laid a part of it in another kneader, to which he added candied fruit. To the remaining major part of the dough, he added chocolate spheres. When both doughs had been kneaded sufficiently, he lifted them into big plastic cases before putting them into a warm chamber for leavening.

    Since nothing interesting happened during the leavening, we left and returned when Roberto had already started cutting the dough into bits of specific weight before forming each bit into a cylinder, which he placed into a cake shape or mould. Being a master baker, his deft hands made it seem easy, although I suspect it takes many years of practice to form the dough so easily. Having shaped the dough into a big cylinder, he made two small cylinder-shapes as well, which he put on each side of the long one. Each time a cake had been finished, his wife or his son would transfer it to metal sheets located on a cart. Having made about 100 cakes, the cart was pulled into the warm chamber for another leavening. After one more break, the dough was ready for baking. Again, the whole family participated, putting the cakes on big metal sheets. When a metal sheet was full, Roberto covered each cake with a layer of cream. When all the cakes on a sheet were covered with cream, the sheet was pushed into an oven for baking. The same procedure was applied to all the other cakes.

    The next day, the cakes were finished, and we could enjoy the delicious taste of the Easter Dove, which tasted like a sweet bread, moist and luscious.

    Since their shop is located next to the bakery, their customers are able to obtain first-class bakery products made just a few metres away. In addition to making pastries, bread and pizzas are also made at this bakery.

     

  • Kolonihagen bakery

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    Kolonihagen bakery in Oslo has found a niche market by means of using traditional types of grain like spelt, baking manually and slowly, following nature’s requirements, and using organic ingredients.

    A lot of bakers were competing on Saturday 16 October 2010, the International Bread Day. Kolonihagen Bakery won first prize with their spelt breadrolls in the category fibre/bran bread. Not unexpectedly, Åpent Bakeri won 3 first prizes.

    The excellent, manually made baker’s products which have become popular in the Norwegian capital was started by Åpent Bakeri, which was founded by Emanuel Rang and Øyvind Lofthus in 1997. They were concentrating on manual baking, letting their bakery products mature naturally, and using a wood-fired oven, which was freighted from Hardanger in the west of Norway to Damplassen in Oslo and working with passion. Besides, by employing bakers who bake manually, lots of their bakers have gone on to found new bakeries like United Bakeries, Kanel Kafe in Sandvika, a baker called Morten Schakenda started a bakery in Lom, and of course, Kolonihagen Bakery in Oslo.

    Kolonihagen Bakery delivers baker’s products weekly or biweekly to their customers who get organic food on their doorsteps and daily to the restaurant Kolonihagen Frogner. The remainder is sold to nearby hotels and restaurants.

    From soil to table visited the bakery shortly after they had been awarded for their spelt breadrolls for which we naturally asked for the recipe. Below is listed a version for making them at home.

    Ingredients:

    • 3.5 decilitres of water
    • 300-400 grams of spelt flour
    • 100 grams of polished spelt (the bran has been removed)
    • 100 grams of crushed spelt
    • 100 grams carrots
    • 10 grams salt
    • 25 grams yeast

    Pumpkin seeds to be sprinkled on the top of the breadrolls.

    How to proceed:

    The day before you want to bake, mix the polished spelt with the crushed spelt and put on water in order to soak the mixture such that the spelt will attract water overnight.

    Mix all the ingredients in a bowl and put the mixture in the food processor. Let it run slowly for 2-3 minutes. Then, turn up the speed such that the dough doesn’t touch the bowl. Let the dough raise for about 2 hours

    Cut up the dough sized like breadrolls. Tip! Moisten the work bench and your hands such that the dough is not attaching to anything. The breadrolls should have round forms since the dough is quite loose. The diameter of the breadrolls should be about 10 cm.

    Let the breadrolls raise at least 25 minutes. Start at a temperature of 250 C, turning it gradually down to 230 C.

    Use organic ingredients only! Kolonihagen is only using organic, stone milled flour from Holli flour mill together with organic, Norwegian carrots.

  • Åpent bakeri

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    Country bread – although the breads are made quickly all of them are made with attention to detail.

    We went to Åpent bakeri (Open bakery) early one morning in order to talk to the bakers and photograph what they were doing. Åpent bakeri delivers bakery products in accordance with tried and true methods, entailing few and small machines, manual labour, and long rest times for the dough, leading to a longer shelf life and more tasty products compared with machine-baked ones. Due to time-consuming and costly work, their products are naturally dearer than conventionally made ones, but as members of Slow Food, we are willing to pay for high quality products.

    Most of the production takes place in 87, Maridalsveien in Oslo where the work is handled by skilled bakers, among several of who are French. They start working around 1130 pm and it’s full activity all night till about 8 in the morning.

    Åpent Bakeri was founded in June 1998 by Øyvind Lofthus og Emmanuel Rang in the centre of Oslo. Since they didn’t want to use an electric oven, like everyone else was using, they were looking for wood-fired ovens. Somehow, Øyvind Lofthus found out that a wood-fired oven had been disassembled and stored in a place called Herand in Western Norway. He went to the owner, presented his plans for founding a bakery and said he wanted to buy the oven. Instead, he got it for free and brought it to Oslo. Then, there were no craft bakeries in Oslo and it was a real surprise to the established bakeries that Åpent Bakeri not only survived, but prospered. Having passed 17 years since the foundation, Åpent bakeri has contributed to a a wider selection and a higher quality of bakery products in Norway besides teaching apprentice bakers and confectioners, who have in turn founded their own bakeries and confectioneries.

    Åpent bakeri sells several thousand breads daily, meaning that the bakers have more than enough to do at night. After all, they shall satisfy all of us who have come to grow fond of their tempting and tasty bakery products, which we can buy at nine cafes at the time of writing in Oslo.