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The calling to become a traditional baker came about fifteen years ago. It wasn’t intentional, and on reflection it still amazes me just the same. Figuratively speaking, the seed found virgin but fertile soil, and I started with a blank slate. It was just the right time, place, and circumstance for me. I doubt that I would ever have become a baker by trade
otherwise. My life took a ninety degree turn. The past few years prior I was working seven days a week building the house for my family, my shop,
and a little for others. I needed a bit of a breather, to slow the pace down a bit. I had the opportunity to do something totally different. By nature I have always been old fashioned, and interested in how people in the past lived – a time when people sealed a deal with a handshake. This was evident in our lifestyle as a family as well as with others, so when the opportunity to bake in a wood fired brick oven came along, my emphasis was to bake traditional bread,
and nothing else. In retrospect, my views and determination back then is what makes the Kaslo Sourdough Bakery such a unique bakery today. This laid the foundation for everything that followed.
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My artistic side had been flourishing for many years in traditional wood carvings my ancestors had practiced, not by trade, but as a hobby. Priority one was to eat and provide good food for my family, which meant a big vegetable and fruit garden, just like most people had in the good old days. To spice up things add some wild fruits as they become ripe and available in the surrounding countryside, which was one reason why my wife and I chose to live in a rural area and not in a big city.
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Adding home baked bread to our list of foods was a great thing and the opportunity was within reach, having that wood fired brick oven to bake in. If I was destined to bake bread, I would bake the way they did it in the old days, and it became my personal challenge to do it.
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Today’s baking technology focuses on present knowledge and preferences shaped by only the past 100 years. The companies that produce all of these quick and easy, convenient methods of baking for the modern baker make sure that they learn those skills in the baking schools, which
makes perfectly good business sense. The students are taught indirectly by industry to ensure product continuity and profit. My ways
were set against this long before by my perspective on life and I was not going to compromise the lifestyle I had. At the time,
I was just doing it as a hobby, a vocation, not only to make money.
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I admit at first I was intrigued and fascinated, and maybe a bit of romanticized. However, I also wanted to prove something, to myself and others. The trial and error phase lasted for weeks and was quite frustrating, but I persisted with it. I was rediscovering what had been lost and was missing in today’s bread. An idealistic friend had introduced me to natural sourdough fermentation, but that was just the idea; how to make good bread was another thing. For weeks I baked daily a batch of bread, honed my skill in heating the oven and experimenting with different techniques.
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It stuck in the back of my mind that way back before modern convenience products people managed to bake bread with simple tools and ingredients, and to do the same, I just needed to unlock the secret. It took practice, practice, and practice but also adjusting methods, as well as using common sense based on observation and study. I did not want to look at any modern books on baking. I wanted to find things out for myself through experimentation. This inspired me to explore in ways a trained modern baker would never pursue.
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Finally I had breakthroughs and the door started to open. I was proud but reluctant to share my discoveries with anyone. It became clear that I had
something special since everyone that tasted my
bread really connected with its characteristic flavour and taste. It wasn’t long before I had my first customers who seemed to be just as enthusiastic as I was about finally baking this extraordinarily good tasting bread. Before long my hobby started to turn into something more, and it launched my career as a traditional sourdough baker. Nobody I knew mastered this type of baking the way I did.
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Over the years, I studied and experimented more and more to really understanding how everything actually works and harmonized together. What was it that I did so differently? This search led to unbelievable diverse realms of study, as you can witness in our website’s content, which acts like an anecdote of the past fifteen years.
My biggest asset was that I grew up in Germany and was fluent in two languages; therefore I could study in
both languages. The most interesting and enlightening books I found dated back 100 years or more, just before the modern bread technology started to take root. The Industrial Revolution and scientific discoveries of the late 1800’s paved the way to the new baking practices of today.
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There are fundamental differences in European style baking compared to North American. Why is it so different, when our roots in the New World were after all, in Europe? The puzzle to the changes in one of our primary staple foods had undergone in the past century and a half was starting to unfold as I dug deeper and deeper into the past.
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All naturally fermented foods have an aura of mystery to them that reaches back to the dawn of history. With modern aids like microscopes we are able to peek into the mystery of the unseen, but do we really understand and appreciate what we see? In our overzealous strife to discover and analyze we seem to overstep our boundaries prior to accepting our own place in nature. Knowing our limits and requirements to live healthy and happy before meddling and manipulating has backfired to devastatingly detrimental effects, such as GMO - Genetically Manipulated Organisms. Biologically, we are still what we are and have to abide to nature’s laws.
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We evolved on this planet and are a part of it with every cell of our bodies. Just analyze what we are made of - every element or mineral on earth is in someway present in every one of us; just examine the ashes of someone that has been cremated. Our well being depends largely on the food we eat and the state of mind we are in. The saying ‘you are what you eat’ is dead on, pardon the pun. Therefore, if you understand the evolution of bread and how it drastically changed over the past 100-150 years you are one step closer to realizing the importance of reverting back to traditionally fermented foods in general, and especially bread. All naturally fermented foods played a key role in facilitating our rise or ascent from the hunter and gatherer to civilized society/culture.
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Our ancestors may not have understood the exact mechanism that went on in the unseen microscopic world, but the attitude, gratitude and respect for it was right. They revered bread as ‘Food from the Gods’. Today we try to play god in many respects and lose sight of what we really are and our evolutionary heritage. Our taste buds can lead us back, but they are also easily exploited by modern marketing practices. Let your instinct guide you and really listen to what your most inner feelings tell you.
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As you understand my philosophy on life and specifically also on bread making, you should also start to understand the multilevel approach that I have been exploring and that it goes much further than just skin deep.
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My goal is to bake as close as possible bread to its original traditional content and characteristics. This means that it needs to be baked on a natural sourdough platform with ingredients as little as possible manipulated or polluted. As well as adhering to time honored recipes, values, principals, and ideals. This devotion has led to the acquirement of our own Tyrolean Natural Stone Mill, and our own Natural Spring Water. My motto is, ‘lead by example’. |
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