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.
