The Open Bakery, Kemptown
Time at The Open Bakery: 10 years
Secret ingredient: air
Element in the mix: salt.
Csaba has been preparing the sourdough when I meet him in a corner of the shop floor. He is wearing a cap at an angle and has a warm smile and sparkly eyes. He tells me he hasn’t been interviewed before…
I have worked in several places as a baker. I came here from London. I used to work as a simple baker at an Italian bakery. I worked with the head baker for 3 years, then moved to the patisserie viennoiseriesection. I was the head there for 3 years. Then I became a croissant specialist. 5 years later, I was head hunted to work as a factory manager in a croissant factory near Heathrow. They had a huge amount of machinery. I had to develop a croissant that looked artisan. I did it, but I don’t like soulless production. My life changed and I moved to Brighton, but I couldn’t find any jobs I liked. So I went back to London to work, driving 160 miles per day for more than a year. Then this job came up. The rest is history.
I learned food technology in my country, Hungary. We were trained for managing big food factories. You need to adapt the dough to machines – you can’t use highly hydrated dough in machines. So, I graduated there and started working in a bakery. I started from the bottom, which was a good experience. I realised I like the artisan way better, it’s closer to me, it’s my way!
What drew you to be a baker in the first place?
My father was a scale engineer. There was a big factory producing scales for all the communist countries. For measuring small things, like in a pharmacy. He had a second job in a big bread factory as maintenance for all the scales. He used to take me with him to the factory at the weekends and give me little jobs. I played while he was fixing the scales. It was a big influencing factor, I still remember the smell of the place.
In my country, because of communism, the whole idea was to make everything the same for everybody. Everybody had the same car, same house, similar life. That’s the psychology… and they eat the same bread. In big towns, there are large factories producing bread for all the surrounding area. They produce tonnes of bread each day, enough for the whole town. But just 3 – 4 varieties within one country. Artisan bakers were not supported.
Here we make more than 12 types of bread every day. We shape the breads by hand. We weigh them to make sure they are the same size. Every piece must be the the same weight and the same shape.Sourdough is traditionally made using a sourdough starter and fed everyday. Here we have a starter that we have been taking care of for more than 25 years!
What does a normal day look like?
We have two kinds of shifts. We have a prep shift and a baking shift. The first shift is about finishing off the prep, and baking off what they’ve done, at the beginning of the day, then preparing dough for the night shift. We start with the sourdoughs because it’s a long process. It takes 18 hours to make the bread – from 8am until 3am the following morning. The sourdough has to develop for 18-20 hours. In the first shift, we mix all the other dough which needs to be prepared for the night and put it in tubs or shape it in dough baskets and put those in the fridge. So they are ready for baking. There are some things which we produce from scratch during the night. We also need to shape the dough which is in the tub. For example, the baguettes and chewy brown, and spelt tin loaf, which we mix during the night. Some things need to be proved and some just baked, some of the dough just needs to breathe, then it’s ready. We check the baking period, slash the dough, and it goes into the oven. That’s why we’re able to do so many kinds of bread and such big amounts for 7 o’clock in the morning. It’s a staged process, starting from when I arrive.
We use 10 different types of flour. They are different because the milling technology is different. From more wholemeal to something more white, more fine or coarser, it can be a different kind of wheat, or not wheat at all, like rye flour. Rye flour, wheat flour, spelt flour. We use all of them. We have ancient wheat flour – 3 kinds of it. One of them (Kamut) was found in Egypt, in the 1940s. Another one was found just over 30 years ago in the Alps in Austria. They found a man in the ice and all around him they found another ancient kind of grain. It has totally different genes and minerals. Everything is different. You can’t grow enough of this here. So it has to be imported. But it is much healthier.
What makes it healthier?
It has different proteins. The minerals are different because the wheat is different. The grain itself is much more protected, so there is no need to use pesticides at all. It doesn’t need to be treated like modern wheat. So many things are different. It is grown now in America. And Italy also. In Italy, it’s another kind. I did a lot of research about that, when I heard about it, because of my scientific background. I discovered it was available, so I started to think about working with it. I developed the ancient wheat and sprouted spelt-berries loaf because I think it’s the best possible type of bread I can give to people. It’s different. That ancient wheat flour is there and spelt. Spelt is close to ancient. Plus, there are germinated seeds in it. Germinated spelt and buckwheat contain nutrients and vitamins needed for new life. The new life starts to grow during the germination process. When it’s germinating you start using it. You put it in the bread…. You’re eating new life. All the goodness that is produced and created for that new life, it can be for us. He laughs. And it’s tasty!
Sounds magical. So you have input into the recipes here?
That’s my day job. In ten years, obviously I’ve created other breads, but this is my favourite one.
My favourite part of the shift is the baking.
It’s hard to wake up at 12 o’clock in the middle of the night -but it’s the salt and pepper of the making process. It’s the best time, feeling it, creating, and making and listening to music. Nobody here, just me. Sometimes I just bake.
One of the good things here is you can see the customers’ faces. In many other places, the baker never sees the people buying their product. Because I’m on the shop floor, I can see them and communicate with them if any questions arise, even crazy questions. Also, I hear their thoughts because I’m not separate. It’s a rewarding place, where you can meet people. People enjoying the smell and things like that, is the reward.
The people who work here are nice people. We work well together. I can tell Justin (the owner) what I think. He gives me opportunities to try things. For example, the ancient bread. He didn’t say ‘no, we don’t do that, it’s too expensive’. There is someone who buys an artisan baguette every day, he’s been doing that ever since I’ve been here. So it’s a ten year relationship. Sometimes I serve him. I know what he likes. He likes it darker, crispier, so I bake it one minute longer in the oven for him.
What are the challenges?
Sometimes the heat. The weather affects the process… using cold water, the ice. So we need to change the amount of yeast or the starter. The first thing I need to do is to make sure the place is warm: close the door, switch off the extractor, turn on the oven, open the door of the oven. That’s in the winter. It’s the opposite in summer. (He laughs.)
So, some recipes are traditional, some you’ve created new?
Justin started this bakery from scratch. His brother learnt in France, and they worked together. We do some of the same things as the Real Patisserie. We became The Open Bakery, 5 years ago or so, we separated from the big company. When you’re part of a big company, you have to make the same products. We still help each other. We still have some of the same type of products, but we can choose what we make here.
Which is the most popular bread in the shop?
We have the chewy brown, which is the signature bread. Justin and Al had it trademarked. No one else can call theirs that. It’s a nice bread.
When I came in the other day, you were putting grain in the bread. What kind of grains do you use?
Sunflower, linseed, pumpkin seeds, poppy seeds and spelt grain. Spelt grain and buckwheat seeds go through the germination process. Other stuff, for other bread, is just toasted in the oven, to make them more flavoursome. And you must soak them in water. Because otherwise the dry seeds take the water from the dough, they affect the hydration of the dough. So that’s why we soak it – one day before. So the process starts earlier. There’s a lot of organisation and planning.
The wheat has changed, especially after Brexit. The Ukrainian war. They supplied to the world, but because of the war they stopped producing enough. That had a big impact. The flour quality was all over the place. Before the war, a simple trained baker could do the job, because nothing changed. Every recipe was the same. But after that, we needed to adapt. The baker has to decide how much water to put in the recipe – it can be more or less because of the quality of the flour. Before the quality was very stable, now it’s not.
Do you make it by hand, or by machine?
The mixing is by machine. It’s hard to make those quantities by hand. But if you’re making a small amount then you can. I do a bread class, teaching people. Then we do it by hand. We do 4 different kinds of bread in the workshop. It’s 5 hours.
What do you like about teaching?
Well, it depends on the people coming. If they like baking, ask good questions, there’s a good atmosphere and they have fun. Many people buy a class for a birthday present.
What do you do when you’re not working?
Swimming in the summer, playing football, cooking. I like that even though I work here, so this is my life. Food. It’s good. I like it.
It sounds like it’s quite meditative.
Yes, it is. Especially during the night. At the same time, it’s busy – but it’s good.
It’s a physical job, even though there are machines. In 10 years’ time, I don’t think I’ll be able to do this … standing up all the time. So I don’t know what will happen l later, I’m not sure. But I’m not worried. That’s why I started teaching. I can teach here, I can teach in my country as well.
Why did you choose salt as your element in the mix? Because of a famous Hungarian Fairy tale. A daughter tells her father, the king, she loves him as much as salt. He is offended and at first, until he tastes something without salt, then he understands.
Salt is an absolutely critical ingredient when baking not only for flavour, but also it has a strengthening effect upon the gluten in the dough.
Salt develops structure in bread. Bread without salt doesn’t work.