The nouvelle vague bakery arrives in Euskadi
The bread he is always awake. Even when it hibernates in places that announce hot bread at all hours. Even when he doesn't smell bread, which is something that should never happen, his eyes are wide open. Let's admit it: We designate every bar by that simple three-letter name that does not cover all its complexity.
There is saturium, a guy from Soria who has been dominating migas for more than 40 years from the coastal town of Lekeitio (Vizcaya) where he moved his bakery out of love. He is picky about the sourdough -supplying it since the 1990s-, with the flours -He goes to look for them wherever they are needed-, with the waters -which filters up to five times-, with the times and even with the woods -only beech from Navarra- that he uses in his wood-fired oven, always hungry for dough.
Saturio is not a newcomer, just like Txema Pascual de Artepan (Vitoria), who has been there for decades (never as many as his father Josemari) bringing good bread to the south of the Basque territory, disseminating it and recovering loaves that have been on the verge of disappearing, like sliced bread or zopako (for soups).
No, three letters are not enough to call every crumb by the same name.
There is good bread. There is “real bread” as they call it at The Loaf bakery in San Sebastian. So, why in the Basque Country does that spectrum of flour, water and salt continue to be consumed at thirty cents from the supermarket?
Edorta Salvador, professor at the Basque Culinary Center and the Bizkaia School of Bakers, is quite clear about it: “Although sourdough bread with long fermentation is here to stay, it is still we are in a transition period in which the health of bread will depend a lot on the economy”.
The production of an artisan bread raises the costs and, therefore, the prices for the consumer. “And there are companies that they cannot depend on the mood of the masses.” Salvador concludes. However, he defends that in Euskadi, "there is room for everyone".
Bad bread is not always consumed out of necessity -which bread knows a lot about- but out of haste. The ritual of the walk to the bakery has been lost and the good morning and the talk in the confidence that comes from knowing that hunger will be satisfied. "We are not German or Nordic either," explains Salvador, "we are still we have a Mediterranean palate and we continue to like medium-cooked and neutral crumb loaves”.
For this reason, even in the most stubborn artisanal bakeries there are still lighter bars that adapt to all tastes. That is why, perhaps, they will also succeed those breads that Iban Yarza calls "neo-rustic" and that they are nothing more than artisan breads only in appearance.
FORTUNATELY, EVEN OLD BREAD REJUVENATES
To Saturio Hornillos, to Txema Pascual, even to Roberto Fernández - soul of the bakery Zalla crust (Bizkaia), fourth generation of bakers, always among the best on the Ruta del Buen Bread and who has risen to the stages of congresses such as Madrid Fusión claiming bread in haute cuisine- they have been joined by more or less young bakers that the masses have eagerly chosen as an inheritance or that have come to them out of curiosity, after observing them out of the corner of their eyes while they were engaged in other more or less rudimentary chores.
One and the other, the veterans, those of the bakery under their arms and the new captives of bread, form a nouvelle vague that, despite its proximity to France - that country that has had a decree on what can and cannot be called bread since 1993 - has not entered through Iparralde but, as in many parts of Spain, he has done it for the Anglo-Saxon station.
The informative work of the British DanLepard, that of the North American Chad Robertson with his Tartine Bakery of San Francisco or the Nathan Myhrvold and Francisco Migoya with their Modernist Bread encyclopedia They have been turning points that have drawn new maps of artisanal bread throughout Europe, “even in Asia”, clarifies Edorta Salvador: "They're making motherfuckin' buns in Singapore!"
This new wave of bakers has a common goal: that of making better quality, healthier and more durable bread. How? With best flours And through long natural fermentations. And it is that the sourdough could not miss in a matriarchal society like the Basque.
The bread did not sleep: it was waiting for them. Bread is patient. And patience, no one wins.
JUANMA ORIBE, BERTEIZ ETA MENDIONDO (Gernika-Mungia, Biscay)
When Juanma Oribe, a chemist by training, hung up his suit jacket to take over a bakery, she did not imagine that Berteiz eta Mendiondo would end up being among the 80 best bakeries in Spain.
Their Long-fermented artisan breads made with natural sourdough and source flours they convey all the grit of this baker who could very well be an Indiana Jones of flour.
has been thrown into the recovery of autochthonous cereal, “old” as he calls it, in Maruri, the tiny Biscayan town where he lives. “Wheat crops in Maruri? What the fuck! And he looks, well, yes, there were." And to this that he has been with the residents of the town while in his breads he uses Asturian spelled, Caaveiro from Galicia or wheat 03 from Aragon, just to give some examples.
With the same energy with which he threw himself into bread, he claims honesty in the bakery: “I am a great defender of gas station bread and supermarket bread as long as it is said what it is”, he clarifies.
He admits that he likes to play and broaden his horizons, which he shows with his sporadic and surprising kiwi bread, intxaursalsa or with beer bagasse. You don't have to challenge Oribe (unless you're a good loser).
UNAI AND ENEKO ELGEZABAL, GURE OGIA (Mungia-Bilbao)
“Bread without tricks, living bread, engaging bread, real bread. We are making the bread that we wanted to make.” Unai and Eneko tell us, the Elgezabal brothers who pilot the ship of Gure Ogia, a family bakery that saw its foundations shake when they discovered, thanks to a meeting with the master baker Josep Pascual, that things could be done differently. “It was like looking through a peephole, but it wasn't enough for us. We had to break the door down, open the windows to see what else was there.”
From making breadcrumbs and canning sliced bread during their teenage summers, they have gone on to be among the best in the National Artisan Bakers Championship. theirs are fleshy loaves, with marked cereal flavors, with an acidic finish and crispy, caramelized crust that recover the old flavor.
His pastries are not far behind. Its puff pastries and panettone stand out, which is a commodity coveted by many and that each year exceeds that of the previous year. And it is that they do not stop learning "because among good bakers the secrets of good bread are no longer kept, but rather shared”.
AIDA SOURCES IZA, IZA OKINDEGIA (Orozko)
Aída Fuentes Iza makes bread from a town of just 2,700 inhabitants at the foot of Mount Gorbea. From there, from Orozko, this young baker has managed to get hold of the Miga de Oro award from the Basque Country 2019 with its traditional wheat loaf and leave her signature on the panarra national map.
At Iza Okindegia, open since 1956 and in the hands of the founder's granddaughter since 2011, they never leave the seasonal and local product, such as pumpkin, hazelnut, tomato or Idiazábal cheese. They work wheat, rye, corn or tritordeum. And they are committed to recovery of the traditional breads of the Basque Country, like the jaiko or the txintxorta: “They are part of our history and it is our responsibility to elaborate them again and make them visible. Can we have any more luck?” she comments.
Wild and healthy breads that hide the whole history of a trade and a maternal tribute, with as much soul as Aída and, above all, tasty in intense crust and structured and tasty crumb. A privilege for the Biscayan neighbors.
SERGIO ALVAREZ, LABEKO (Bilbao)
Juanma Oribe is not the only chemist who has ended up red-handed. Also Sergio Álvarez, who started this bread business in Cantabria with a home oven and who he ended up opening his own workshop in Castro Urdiales. Now, Labeko reigns in the Old Town of Bilbao, in that tangle of streets where you eat as well as you drink and celebrate life.
Sergio Álvarez's is a bakery that does not make any aesthetic fuss and in which what he prefers is, neither more nor less, the bread. And go bread. Like his wave companions, he uses sourdough, organic flours from different cereals and long fermentation times to loaves that can be smelled for miles around.
Labe means 'oven' and Labeko, 'from the oven', which is where they come from. their 'osoa' (wholemeal) with stone-ground wheat, rye and seeds or their 'berezia' (special) bar made up of a crumb whose alveoli are for framing. Their sliced breads and brioche are not to be missed.
THE LOAF (San Sebastian)
The Loaf team has managed to bring the bakery into the 21st century without losing sight of the bread, which is what matters. Since they opened in 2014 in the Gros neighborhood of San Sebastian, they have multiplied their points of sale to serve more than 1,000 customers a day and their loaves are not lacking in the rankings of the National Good Bread Route.
His case is curious, because Xavier de la Maza and his team, "true food activists" launched into this gastronomy several years before and they did it from the branch of disclosure. To the workshops they organized with Iban Yarza throughout Spain, they were joined by the translation of the famous book Handmade by Dan Lepard.
And there was something else: encouraged by Lepard, they opened in 2012 a pop-up bakery in San Sebastián, The Loaf In A Box, a glass container in the middle of the street that lasted three months and that earned them a position among the five best bakeries in the world according to Food & Wine magazine. The Loaf was already a brand.
Like his sourdough loaves that he makes manually, one by one, his team of eight bakers led by Txomin Jauregi, with flours from Catalonia and Zamora and that are not lacking in the dining rooms of Mugaritz, Geralds or the Hotel María Cristina. produce ten different loaves of toasted crust and dense crumb full of nuances. The turmeric bread is a bread that does not need sauces to navigate.
ANA MONTSERRAT AND NATXO BELTRÁN, MENDIALDEKO OGIA (Maeztu)
“We wanted to be the village bakery”, comment Natxo Beltran when we ask him why they don't distribute more bread outside of Maeztu, a town in Alava with just 717 inhabitants. He and his partner Anne Montserrat, they left Barcelona and their positions in a multinational company and launched themselves into the Basque country to reconnect with the rural environment that had surrounded them in their childhood, “to recover the life of baserri and that our daughters would not grow up in plastic parks”.
From the inevitable trial-error and with the learning shared by this new generation of bakers -and also thanks to the trust of the neighbors, "every day they bought us bread, whether it came out better or worse"- They have already reached a production of 150 artisan loaves a day. Are from organic grain, sourdough, of course, and only from long fermentations.
Among its loaves - white wheat, whole wheat with seeds, 100% spelled, rye, oats - stands out that of ancient wheat, made with native varieties of Álava that some farmers in the area have begun to recover and that in Mendialdeko Ogia they turn into breads with character, with a marked cereal flavor.
ESTITXU ELIZASU, MARIANA SALOMON AND SANDRA GUILLEN, GARUA (Hondarribia)
Estitxu, Mariana and Sandra They are three women who came from worlds as far removed from bread as Catalan audiovisual production and computing, so they knew a lot about prioritizing and perhaps that is why they have ended up giving bread, and its times, the importance it deserves.
The bread was winning the battle to the cinema through home bakery workshops until Estitxu ended up making professional courses at the Guild of Bakers of Barcelona. The film was then shot in the Garua workshop, where they make some of the best bread in Guipúzcoa -and part of Iparralde-.
They are convinced that the new wave is going to settle in Euskadi because "People demand more and more to know what they eat, how it is made and quality products".
For their sourdough and long fermentation breads, they they use french flours -Fuenterrabía is one step away from France- from the Mouling de Colagne flour mill and Villamayor de Huesca. "We are committed to good raw materials, closeness, transparency and awareness of good nutrition", comments Estitxu from Garua.
Distributed throughout the week they offer breads of 14 different varieties, although his bestsellers are spelled and 100% whole wheat. elaborate artisan pastries and even homemade yogurts (Mariana ran a yogurt shop with her family in Peru) with fresh milk from the land that can also be tasted in her cafeteria.
There is more, of course: Joseba Arguiñano at JA Zarautz, David Martínez from Basquery (Bilbao), the boys from Garia (Tolosa) or that organic bread from the young Oraska elaborated in the traditional way in its own farmhouse and distributed throughout Gernika, Errigoiti, Lekeitio, Bermeo and Arrieta.
The wave is no longer a wave. It's a tidal wave.