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If you are the youngest in a family,
... you will be the responsible of going to ...
... the market or bakery to get the bread.
They are the creators, they are the reasons ...
... of those long queue for the Ramadan bread,
of the pastry-madness of the early-risers ...
on their way to work,
and of the special days enriched
by the cakes and other bakery products.
Do you want to know the hidden heroes ...
of these bakeries you stop by every single day?
Erhan Kalender is one of those hidden masters...
I was born in 1981, in Giresun, Tirebolu.
I have been living in Istanbul for 16 years.
I have been working here for nearly 15 years. I'm Married
I have one child. Started my career when I was at 16 or 17.
First I worked as the counterman,
then I stepped to baking in the course of time.
Now I am working in the baking.
We work in double-shift, night and day.
Now I am working for the night.
Our bread type is so unique, called Trabzon Vakfıkebir Bread,
it is particular to Black Sea area.
With sourdough.
My aunt made me start this job.
We are from Karadeniz, and she was also in the township of Eynesil.
I get started this job in Eynesil, in Giresun, it was 1996.
Then I went on like this.
You know, my aunt built that bridge.
Anatolia offers us many different tastes all around it.
Therefore, most of the people migrate to Istanbul ...
from Anatolia just to work in food sector in Istanbul.
Some of them come to Istanbul to earn a living and some others to bake ...
... 'bread'; leaving their families, wives and children behind.
I always make it to visit my hometown once in 2 or 3 years.
And now that it's my job, I always compare the bread types.
For example, in the Black Sea, they have much more crusty and hard breads
which is particular to Trabzon bread to be sour and crusty.
But here, there is not such system.
When you made a crusty one,
... you can get criticized like 'this is too tough and tasteless!'
So there is a huge difference as you see.
Water type or atmosphere can also be a problem here.
I can tell a lot about the taste or quality in this area.
Do you know at what time do these hidden heroes start work ...
... and serve you those toasty breads for the breakfast?
I got to work at 9:30 or 10 o'clock in the evening.
Before getting started, we change our clothes,
... because I work in the bakery.
I have to adjust my firewood and stove,
... especially we spend much time for the paste ...
of the Trabzon bread.
We started with the dough which my assistant made ready himself.
After a while, we went on at 10 o'clock.
We will have made a particular amount of bread ...
... which we call 'Three-Shift' till 6 in the morning.
It had both funny and stressful aspects.
If we work at night, it is stressful, but you can also find ...
... enjoyable things when you work happily.
We have a program according to the shift. It is much better.
First, a dough-chef should exactly know how to make paste.
Baking depends on the dough-making,
...but baking keeps the ball rolling, too. So they work together.
If a dough-chef makes a mistake once or twice with the paste...
If he can't arrange the sourness, it will always be a problem.
And when there is a problem, it effects you and others, too.
So the biggest thing is the dough-chef, our dough-chef is ...
...the key-person. Then comes the baker.
Because, your bread taste depends on the paste, so you have to be ...
... wide awake, you should have a positive bond with the dough-chef.
I have been working in this field for 3,5 or 4 years.
Our dough type is unique, which is Trabzon Vakfikebir.
We work on the Vakfikebir.
It should be sour-dough
and it should be rested
for one day till it gets soured.
We get started at 7 o'clock,
I mean it should be dough till 7 o'clock for us to start.
I knead dough for half an hour.
After that, the paste rests in the boiler for 45 minutes.
Then we put it into kneading trough,
... we call it 'Islanga'. Today it is called 'Islanga'
We rest it in the trough because the paste ...
... should be such thickened that when you cut it like this ...
... you can see the other side, so it should be rested ...
... for two hours or so to get that consistency.
After rested for a while, it gets ready for cutting.
Cutting means shaping the bread.
This process takes 20 minutes or so.
We put the dough into the pot which gives it a bread-shape.
After that, it all rests in the pot again for 45 minutes or 1 hour,
maybe 1 hour 15 minutes.
When it seems getting fermented,
there comes the second dough and so.
In the end, we can say that it is ...
... ready because it's off the chef's hands.
so far the dough-chef has worked on it and it went on till 4 or 4:30 ...
... in the morning. During this period, we completed 3 shifts.
I mean, 3 shifts of dough. As every master has his own field,
... Chef Erhan is known with his talent on Trabzon bread,
which is unique in the Black Sea.
Chef Erhan states that it is not enough to knead dough,
... it is also important to bake it. So, that's his job!
No matter how much he knead the dough,
... you have a right to interfere with that paste as a baker.
When it's your turn, you normally interfere with it.
You can't put it into the stove,
as soon as you light up the stove.
Especially Trabzon Bread.
Because it has to be rested for a while by nature. One hour.
And during that,
wood fire shouldn't be on neither high nor low level,
if it is low-level, it gets too raw,
I mean, left uncooked, it if high-level,
then it gets too boiled,
burnt out, you should toast it carefully.
You must read the dough like a book,
whether you are the baker or the dough-chef,
the point is you must know about the bread-dough,
... because there are such bread-types some of ...
... which make you work fast, or others make you take it easy.
If the dough-chef doesn't know much how ...
... to make a paste, he certainly will spoil the work.
After the stove was turned on,
we must wait for an hour or so.
In an hour when the fire keeps on lighting,
... we get the average heat level.
Then, normally wood fire turns into ember.
First you clean up the whole stove,
... it is not because of the dirt ...
but it can collect up the wholemeal or flour,
... you must first clean it up, because it becomes a paste.
For example, in an ordinary bakeries,
there are lots of steaming issues.
In an ordinary company, they don't use the paste,
... they only do the steaming.
Steaming depends on the paste, indeed,
... when we turn on the stove,
I mean, adjust the heating temperature,
We make it with our hands,
that's why it is called 'paste',
this is the system with which we knead the dough.
What is İslim?
Islim means the pressurized water ...
... makes the steaming with a spray inside.
This is the İslim system.
We don't use it now.
We don't use it because we use paste. We don't use it now.
We don't use it because we use paste.
We apply the paste on our ...
... dough so the heat in the stove affects it.
İslim is a kind of water,
it is the steaming, but the thing
... we apply on the dough is also watery,
... it is a mixture of water and flour.
When you apply it to the dough,
... it becomes steamy.
So you know, İslim does its job,
I mean, the most vital aspect of Trabzon bread ...
... is that it is made by paste instead of İslim.
For the taste and the hygiene of the bread,
... management plays an important role as well ...
... as the collaboration of a good dough-chef and baker.
İsmail Tasci who has been working on this field for years will ...
... tell us about the system and difficulties about this job.
Why we have problems in the bread-industry ...
... is that we don't have qualified employee,
... lots of the personnel is untalented, ignorant ...
... and the associations we work together doesn't support us ...
... we are alone in the field,
... also there is a fast competition.
A 250-gram-bread cost 1 lira,
... but you can find a bread costing 40 or 50 kurush on the market.
But where is the book value of this 50-kurush-bread?
So this has a negative effect on the people who work properly.
Breads, pastries are all an absolute must for our lives.
What about those pastries and cakes?
Those indispensable creations which are ...
... dressing the showcases with ...
... a different taste for each day,
... our tasteful ornaments for ...
... the birthdays or Christmas, how are they made?
Kadir Karakus will tell us about those ...
... hidden heroes of the showcases in the patisseries...
My name is Kadir Karakus. Born in 1982.
I have been in this field since 1994.
I am married. I have four children.
My three children are students.
We have a nine-month-old baby.
My wife is a housewife.
First I worked as a bell boy, then I sold ice-cream.
From ice-cream to baklawa.
Then from baklawa to pastry I changed my career.
Then I saw how great this occupation is.
I tried hard to be one of them, I decided to work with them.
Pastry is a fine visual art,
... so you are always producing something.
You serve for people and it gives you ...
... a special delight, I am really happy with my job.
What I feel about pastry is like this.
My apprenticeship on baklawa had
... ended when I decided to work on this field,
... but there wasn't any job requirement,
... luckily my uncle's son was working in that company.
He took me there. I started there.
I learned this job under Mario Baroni profession.
I worked there for 7 years as an apprentice.
Because there weren't any apprentice like me.
The good thing is this.
I had lots of experience.
Apprenticeship teaches you much more ...
... things than you could ever imagine.
There is no 'best' in this job.
You should always follow the latest developments,
... you should be innovative.
We have always been researching.
Not only in books but also in the social media,
... always detailing.
When I started, I tried to know every kind of tastes,
... this and that, whatever ...
I must learn about the field,
... for example you should smell the vanilla.
Only a spoon of vanilla can change the smell of the milk.
It can inhale the smell of the oil. I remember tasting that, too.
You always taste every kind ...
... of ingredients in the course of time.
Then you get bored a little bit. You lose the taste of it after ...
... a while. Like the saying 'shoemaker's son always goes ...
... bare on foot', you can't eat what you make.
Like an artist watching his masterpiece for ...
... hours after he finished.
He watches it in delight.
I also feel happy and delighted when ...
I see and observe my masterpiece.
I adore being creative above all.
Let me tell about the problems.
You have always a risk f burning the pastries,
... you should take an action as ...
... soon as possible because it is always ...
... hot and milk can become sour.
We have such problems.
Especially our special days are problematic.
We are always standing when we are working,
so we don't have a chance but to stand,
... or else you can't concentrate,
... if you can't concentrate you can't work much,
... because you were trained like this since ...
... the apprenticeship, so that's impossible.
You have varicose on your feet,
... meniscus on your knee caps,
... arthtitis on your arms,
... you have all kinds of hernia in your spine or neck.
We met with Chef Kadir who is addicted to his job,
... despite the problems he has and we asked ...
... him questions about his secret recipes.
Now I am making a cane,
... it is an intense mixture which we call 'mus',
I mean it is a kind of parfait,
it is a finenziel with raspberry or peanut alternatives.
Finanziel means 'bobbin' in French.
But we consider it as angel-cake in Turkey.
What I am doing is a minimized model of a standard cake.
We make it with two layes,
... which we call 'Cake-Basket',
... we put croquant, blackberry,
... raspberry, black cherry.
Now we will apply, sorry chef,
some plain jelly to make it look
like more transparent and bright,
... we call it natural jelly.
There is a saying in the pastry like 'excellence in the throat'.
The taste we give to our customers...
But what we are trying to do is to make a more qualified ...
... and remarkable production, we try to keep up quality.
There is another hidden hero nearby the ...
Chef Kadir who is the creator of those delicious pastries ...
... dough-chef, Nurkan Basturk.
I'm Nurkan Basturk. I'm from Erzurum.
I removed to Istanbul in 2000.
I started pastry-bakery with my brother.
I have been baking pastries since that day.
I am in the speciality section in the cookies-Section,
... it is pastry-section.
I'm working on the pastries such as cakes, tarts and cookies.
I can make cheesy pastry, too.
But now I don't make them now. I make cookies,
all kinds of cakes, tarts with bitter almonds or Turkish shortbreads...
Mr. Kadir is my best friend.
He is my chum, you know.
He is a real master.
We make it real, but we are not seen, we are just sellers.
But we are the ones who give a shape to them.
Just like in the bakeries, there are managers ...
who maintain the hygiene and taste in the patisseries, too.
Sabri Gulhan who has been giving service in this industry
will tell us about working system
and problems of the pastry-chefs in Turkey.
We have been working with Mr. Kadir for 5 years.
He seems loving his job.
That's why we work together.
As a small business, everyone has their own problem in Turkey.
We can't expand business like chain stores.
We can afford buying the raw material like them.
There is a lack in the qualified personnel in the industry.
Now we don't have many personnel as an apprentice.
I think government should support this, too.
As a matter of fact, this is a hard job
which is risky about either taste and hygiene.
Hygiene is deadly important because we work in the food sector.
You know, we always clean up the knife every time we work.
We clean up the surface of our counter before getting started.
In the evening when we call it a day, we sterilize ...
... the whole counter with soapy water,
... then we apply cleaning materials ...
... o get rid of the microorganism accumulation.
Now as you see, it is a palette knife,
... we smooth the cake with it.
When we smooth the cake ...
... or make the pastry, we use this.
We have a knife like this.
We don't use this to shape,
... we use it for the dressing.
We have a fork like this, after we smooth the cake,
... we use this fork to shape it.
Other one is to smooth the whipped cream,
... which we use most, and this mica,
we use it for smoothing the pot interior.
That's all our equipment.
Pastry cooks, bakers...
They all make those delicious breads,
... and those great tastes.
Bread is the most sacred food everywhere in Anatolia.
They are the essential beings in special days and celebrations.
They work hard with love to serve us great tastes as well as ...
... being modest not to show off theirselves like a showcase.
They are always behind the curtain,
... leaving the enjoying moments just for us.
They call theirselves 'hidden heroes behind the pompous showcases'.
Our hidden heroes are our wives.
They are such a relief in our world.
Sometimes when we go home, too tired to speak a word,
they treat us in such a relaxing way that we feel so peaceful.
I myself make the birthday cakes of my children.
But honestly, not with that enthusiasm I feel for my customers.
I always slide over the details. But when it comes to the ...
... customer care, I always do my best to help as thoroughly as I can..
... in every aspect. No one can deny this, everybody loves cake.
In the pastry, you have a wide range of alternatives,
... you appeal to every taste.
Everybody has their own taste about pastry.
Some people don't like chocolate cakes,
... some likes fruit cakes.
So, nobody can turn down a cake-offer, especially children.
Let me tell, when it is 40 degree celsius in summer,
... we always work
... standing for a whole day, looking for different tastes,
... different alternatives for the customer satisfaction ...
... to serve you more than ever, we work hard.
There is always a hidden hero behind ...
... every attractive showcase.
I am the hidden hero here.