For local baker and owner of the Schoon bakeries, Fritz Schoon, the ancient, detailed and slow process of baking bread is the most paramount ingredient to ensuring that bread is as nutritional as it should be. But this was not what Schoon had always believed.
Fritz Schoon, the baker behind the Schoon bakeries, says that becoming an artisanal bread baker was never part of the plan. PHOTO: Supplied/Fritz Schoon
“I don’t usually tell people this.”
That was how Fritz Schoon, local baker and owner of the Schoon bakeries, would begin to describe the origins of the Schoon bakeries. It was 2007 and Schoon was working his first job on a construction site as a junior quantity surveyor, in the very place that he had grown up: Kempton Park, Johannesburg. “Very industrial. Very blue-collar,” said Schoon. At that time, construction and development in Johannesburg was booming, said Schoon. That was the time when people were building houses and estates everywhere, he said.
This was a time when Schoon didn’t know much about the bread baking business. Schoon first opened the Oude Bank Bakkerij, in 2010. Three years on, the bakery’s name would become Schoon de Companje. Now, the Schoon surname is a household name in town, and is associated with scrumptious artisan breads paired with warm coffee blends – a quintessential fit to Stellenbosch and its neighbouring areas, Somerset-West and Franschhoek.
Fritz Schoon, the owner of the Schoon bakeries had studied a BSc in quantity surveying, at the University of the Free State, before he became serious about the artisanal bread baking trade. PHOTO: Supplied/ Fritz Schoon
It was during that year, in 2007, that Schoon had noticed a growing need for food on isolated construction sites. Out of this need the concept Zeeyabonda Kiosks was born, Schoon said. Schoon would set up a kiosk on these construction sites and employ ladies to cook for workers on the site. “They would cook pots of stew, and make half loaves of jam and butter – whatever the contractors needed,” said Schoon. When the kiosks started using a lot of bread, Schoon decided to start his own little bakery on the side of his parent’s property. “We started servicing out of that little bakery, baking for some rangers from the airlines and for Express School Foods (a distribution network for school tuck shops),” Schoon said. “The business just grew.”
Schoon was spending most of his time on the Zeeyabonda Kiosks side-business. Now that Schoon was running this little bakery, he started spending a lot of time reading about and studying the bread baking trade – particularly about the artisan bakers of Europe. “It was just a very romantic idea to me – you know, wood-fired oven… baking through the night, and natural fermentation,” Schoon said. Schoon was distracted. In that same year, Schoon was fired from his job.
When Schoon lost his first job, he was young and unattached. “I wanted to go and see if I could find an apprenticeship in Europe,” said Schoon. It was a great plan – except, it doesn’t work like that. “You have to go and study there,” Schoon said. “You don’t just pitch up there, and say you want to be a baker.”
The real deal
Around the same time that Schoon was jobless and falling in love with bread, his father had a lunch appointment with family at a little bakery in Knysna. The bakery used wood-fired ovens and natural fermentation. In that bakery, Schoon’s father called him. “The romantic bakery that you are talking about,” he said. “I am sitting in one… and I think it is the real deal.”
The bakery’s name was Île de Païn. That was the bakery where Schoon would do an apprenticeship under an Austrian baker, Markus Farbinger, during 2008 and 2009. The days were long and the money was almost non-existent, Schoon said. He couldn’t even afford rent, so he was staying on an old boat and paying the boat’s docking fees. But, that didn’t matter to Schoon; Farbinger would have a significant impact on him.
Bread has some of the most nutrient dense seeds in it: Wheat and gluten. Bread is a significant food source, says Fritz Schoon, award-winning baker owner of the Schoon bakeries. PHOTO: Supplied/ Fritz Schoon
“[Farbinger] completely changed everything that I thought life was, what it could be – the whole back end of it,” Schoon said. Farbinger would not only change the way Schoon thought about bread, but he would also change the way Schoon thought about relationships, people and himself. Everything mattered – especially those small, insignificant things – to Farbinger, Schoon said.
Farbinger was a purist, he said. It was the way you approached the simplest tasks that mattered, Schoon said. The way you cleaned the tables, mattered. The way you swept the floor, mattered. Similarly, in terms of bread production, Farbinger would teach that detail mattered the most. “That was quite huge,” said Schoon.
Detail would become the biggest differentiating factor for the Schoon brand, said Schoon. “Every detail that goes in…we question everything – every single detail,” he said. Schoon trains his bakers, personally, for three years at the Schoon manufactory café, on Bird Street in Stellenbosch. Having a centralised bakery where all the skilled bakers and pastry chefs bake and distribute to the other Schoon cafés, means that quality is consistent, said Schoon. Quality is found in the details, Schoon said. And quality is important, he said.
When bread is baked properly, it is rich in so many vitamins, minerals and essential fatty acids, says Fritz Schoon, owner of the Schoon bakeries. PHOTO: Supplied/Fritz Schoon
Bringing bread back
During those two years in Knsyna, Schoon had become proud of the product he was making. He had fallen in love with the slow and ancient process of baking bread. That was the first time Schoon learnt how significant bread was as a food source, he said.
“[It’s] rich in so many vitamins and minerals and essential fatty acids,” said Schoon. “[Bread] is like this anti-food. Everyone is against this product, and the wheat-free movement became this multi-billion business,” he said.
Since the first time water touched flour, gluten has existed. “It is not the enemy,” Schoon said. According to Schoon, the enemy was the modern day production of bread. Making bread fast means that all those sugars remain in the bread – it wasn’t meant to be like that, he said. When bread is produced at speed, our bodies won’t get all the nutritional value out of bread, as our bodies should, said Schoon. When you tune out bread in a wood-fired oven, after it has naturally fermented over a few hours – that is rewarding, he said. “You slice that bread… and you alone understand the nutritional value of it, and how your body responds to that,” Schoon said. “It will just blow your mind.”
When Schoon left Knsyna, it was by chance that he would find a space at the back of the Oude Bank building. He turned the small room he was renting into a bakery. Schoon built a shower and put a mattress in the upper-storeroom. In that space, he was living.
It began there – ten years ago – in that small bakery, at the back of the Oude Bank building. Up before the streets got busy. Up at the crack of dawn. That’s when Schoon started working to put real bread back on the table.
Bringing real bread back to the table is a philosophy that Fritz Schoon, the owner of the Schoon bakeries, and the bakers at Schoon teach and practice. PHOTO: Supplied/ Fritz Schoon