A lot of bread has rained since that first baguette “hard on the outside and raw on the inside” that Beatriz Echeverría (Madrid, 1972) made in her London kitchen when she was still a Doctor in History. But the passion is the same. “Bakery, like cooking, has a quite vocational aspect, because you love the product you make. And not only that, what you especially love is the preparation of that product… The transformation of the dough, almost magical, is for me one of the most pleasant things in the bakery. You work with something alive,” she says.
Many years after that experiment, in its five stores in Madrid, breads are sold (which are also served in some restaurants) such as seed loaf, rye bread, baguette and its protein bread, the result of I D i with the who have anticipated a trend that has arrived with force. And research is a constant at El Horno de Babette, which is what is called the “temple” of bread that he has built together with her partner, Carla Medrano. Her first bakery was opened in 2013. But before, many things had to happen.
“I studied Journalism and History, then I did a doctorate in History and my path was towards the academic world, in fact, I was teaching for a year at the University of London. My mother is a very good cook and I have always loved to cook, and one day I decided to try making bread because she had a cookbook in which, at the end, there was a baguette recipe. I loved the experience and it happens to me that, when I like something, I need to go deeper… I started researching and took some courses in England.”
After almost a decade of kneading and baking homemade bread, a job opportunity for her husband to return to Madrid brought Beatriz Echeverría back. It was then that she took a big turn in her professional life. “One day I thought: really, where my time flies is in the kitchen, making bread. So I said to myself: ‘This is mine, I’m setting up a school.’” And she so she did she.
It was 2008 when the baker taught her first bread class in her own home, under the name Babette’s School. Then came a place where they could continue training others and, in 2013, in an adjacent space, the first store and workshop. “The school has a very broad social part and I liked, above all, the production part. I had gone to New York to do an internship in two bakeries (Amy’s Bread and Sullivan Street Bakery), a super good two-month experience, although, yes, very painful, because you spent 8 hours forming bread… It was a terrible thing, but I learned a lot of things. And when I came back I thought: ‘I would like to have a bakery.’” “I dreamed that I had a workshop! I was encouraged.” El Horno de Babette was born, a pioneering bakery in the resurgence of sourdough bread in the capital of Madrid.
“There is a very terrible thing that happens with the bakery and that is that, when it began to be industrialized, in addition to machines, the world of additives, improvers and mixes also appeared. The bag comes to you with the bread already made, you just have to add water, so you become an operator. And when this happens you also become a slave to the improvement company, because you stop knowing how to make bread. I am very sad that the trade is lost, apart from the fact that it is essential to put quality products in our mouths, the best we can afford. The good thing about bread is that, although ours has a different price compared to that of a supermarket, it is still the cheapest product you put on the table. In Spain we eat a lot of bread, so it is even more important that it is of quality.”
Soon, from El Horno de Babette, Beatriz Echeverría began to change the scenario of quality bread in our country, contributing to the enhancement of a product always present in the Mediterranean diet and that has survived several assaults: from pre-baked bread industry from more than 50 years ago to the modern anti-gluten movement.
“For 10 years now, in Spain, there has been a boom in bread and, in general, everything that is a quality artisan product. It has also happened with beer and cheese. It is still a minority trend, in a certain sense, because many people eat bread that is not of great quality because they prefer to buy, for example, a beer. You choose what you spend your money on, perhaps a good ham. All lines, industrial bread, artisanal bread… have their audience.”
Perhaps that is why we continue to fail in bread culture in our country. “There are areas of Spain that do have it and others that do not. France and England don’t have it either, Germany, yes, because they eat a lot of rye bread and this is not a bread that can be made industrially quickly, that has helped. Neither does the US, although the movement started there a little earlier. We don’t have a good bread culture yet, but we are on the right track.”
What does good bread have to have? “Nutrition, flavor and longevity. What do I care if a bread is very healthy if it is very bad! Bread has to be enjoyment, above all. You eat it and you’re dying. A bread has to be very delicious, it has to last and it has to feel good, that is, nourish you.”
Beatriz Echeverría achieves all this with the best ingredients (stone-ground flours from Roca Fariners, Moulin de Colagne, Despelta and Biopalacín, all of them with organic certification) and the most appropriate processes: non-aggressive kneading, slow fermentations, use of dough mother dough (five different doughs fed by hand each day), temperature control, hand formed and baked in a hearth oven. This is how bread is made: wheat, spelled, rye, whole wheat and buckwheat.
“I quite like the processes in the workshop, which is like a dance. Sometimes it squeaks a lot, their feet get trampled a lot, that’s why I love when it flows, when everyone knows where they are and where it’s their turn to go. Although it is a very demanding job, it is very rewarding.”
El Horno de Babette is a founding member of the collective La PEPA (Little Like-minded Bakers). In 2016, it received the La miga de Oro award in its first edition in the capital, when the bakeries were judged by visiting them on site. In 2018, Beatriz Echeverría received the Baker of Excellence award. In addition to her work at El Horno de Babette, she is editor-in-chief of PAN magazine and has a podcast dedicated to baking, Contigo, pan y Onion. Along the way, she has also written a book, The Elements of Bread (Libros con Miga, 2021), considered among the best bread-making manuals at home and also the most personal presentation of her way of seeing bread. “In the future, I would love to set up a vocational school for people who want to own a bakery or work as a baker,” she says. Another dream that will surely come true.
