Eric Einstein and Yehudit Ravitz begin to sing from a small speaker placed above the glass display case of "Haggai and the Bread" exactly at seven in the morning, as if some municipal by-law that had until now blocked the sound of awakening sounds was suddenly lifted.
Sorrow, eyes, a woman, a conversation about Da and Ha.
Yoni Rechter's piano fills the air, fighting for its place in the industrial space in front of the huge sacks of flour, and can handle them quite easily.
Boxes of bread are moved from here to there, waiting for the driver to take them further, into the day, and past restaurants that invest a little more in their baskets.
When he comes in, fresh, hot coffee will also be poured, and a freshly baked loaf of bread will be wrapped and delivered to him regardless of delivery.
It is a hug in a brown paper bag, and it can be assumed quite easily that it will warm him more than any physical gesture.
An island sinking in the water, angels in the sky, a meal of sorrows.
Einstein's unaccented A continues to confuse listeners even decades later, but this meal is well organized in the mind.
A cup of coffee, a cutting board with fresh bread, something small next to it.
Everything else will take care of itself.
Long years of passion.
Hagai and the bread (photo: Walla! system, Yaniv Garnot)
no pressure
Hagai and the bread (photo: Walla! system, Yaniv Garnot)
"I always saw myself with a wood stove, part of a very rural image, probably with some wheat plot near the house, but I realized that this is not the reality in Israel"
Hagai Ben Yehuda's "Haggai and the Bread" has been operating for only a few weeks in the Florentine neighborhood in Tel Aviv, but is based on many years of passion for bread, and the hard work that brings that passion into the baker's life.
This is evident in the wonderful choreography of its people, in the measured and self-confident movements, and is mainly expressed in the absence of the ecstatic pressure that bakes into everyday life throughout the country, and in fact throughout the world.
Here, you can chat about da and ha even minutes before the door opens for customers.
"I always saw myself with a wood-burning stove, part of a very rural image, probably with some plot of wheat near the house, but I realized that this is not the reality in Israel," described Ben Yehuda with realistic romance, "the move to Tel Aviv is the realization of these two directions - to bring the principles of the field, agriculture, the land. I felt that this could be very true."
Just don't eat the head.
Hagi and the bread
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"True, there is a big contrast between the environment and our mill, for example, but we wanted everything to face the street, to be seen. It was difficult for me to enter a place that is very made, and here I could really create it"
We sit and talk in one of the corners of the bakery, and I try to mix the words into the urban neighborhood.
The transparent walls - an overly designed and artificial gimmick in many places, but not here - help a little, and Ben Yehuda completes what is needed.
"True, there is a big contrast between the environment and our mill, for example, but we wanted everything to face the street, to be seen. It was difficult for me to enter a place that is very made, and here I could really create it."
He talks about types of flour with a twinkle in his eye, and knows how to draw wheat routes from the Middle East of old to the European fields of today, but also knows very well when to stop and when not to "dig too much" for the Israeli customer, because you have to "mediate without eating the head", as he defined it.
A small plate, with the "breakdown chain" of the flour, is placed on the counter just for this dance - questions about "whole bread" and answers to why there is not exactly what you thought was whole bread, but there is something here that is fuller than full.
What happens with this plate, and how much you let it enrich you before you decide to buy it, is the life that could be here for all of us, if we stopped for a moment.
A brioche masterpiece.
Hagai and the bread (photo: Walla! system, Yaniv Garnot)
"I feel that it is something bigger than me, and the feeling now is that we have indeed been adopted here. It allows me to breathe"
"Moving here was very difficult, it's a drastic change in life and routine," repeated Ben Yehuda, "but I feel that it's something bigger than me, and the feeling now is that we have indeed been adopted here. It allows me to breathe."
So he breathes, then apologizes because he has to move the car from red-white to blue-white.
There are things greater than the greatest things.
The doors open at eight, and what walks in with morning slowness is probably the most eclectic crowd I've come across recently.
A fancy lady who came back for the third time this week to buy half a loaf (most of the breads here are sold by weight, allowing targeted consumption and preventing the waste of bread that has lost it), an exerciser who finished TRX and still dreams of "but healthy" carbohydrates, a young woman who in a few days, hopefully, will become For a new mother on maternity leave, and also the model house of the Florentine neighborhood, if I can still identify one - a big dog, little sleep hours, coffee in a mug from home - looking for something sweet nearby.
Cracked and brown.
Hagai's baguettes and bread (photo: Walla! system, Yaniv Granot)
Olives and dough.
The plot of Hagai and the bread (photo: Walla! system, Yaniv Granot)
A hot oven that offers hot things from it, in the end that's probably what we're all looking for
Everyone, unsurprisingly it's quite surprising to be honest, finds what they were looking for, and also some things they didn't know they were looking for.
The skepticism stems from the almost total focus of the place and Ben Yehuda himself on bread, and from the fact that even the coffee here ends up in a filter ("There are places that make excellent coffee, it's a whole world, a profession in itself," he modestly explained, "so I decided to just go with a good filter from the Talpiot Market "), but you know - a hot oven that offers hot things, in the end that's probably what we're all looking for.
You can find here, among other things, crackling baguettes with sound engineering that should receive an Ecum award, plutons with black olives and yogurt and also a great, special, different bread range. Rich incorn bread, for example (and easily digested due to the gluten properties of this specific wheat variety) , sunflower rye that doesn't have to wait for butter, country bread loaded with walnuts, smaller loaves with hazelnuts and figs, and also spelled bread - a really spectacular rainbow, in earth tones that have never been so colorful.
"Something focused and deep."
Hagi and the bread
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I look at the offer, and ask the obvious question about "coffee and pastry", and how the audience accepted its absence, actually.
"The Israeli consumer really wants more, and everyone here asks us where the borax is," laughs Ben Yehuda, "but as a craftsman, this is what I know and want to do - something focused and deep. So we answer that there is bread here."
And yet, apart from actual bread, there is also a "slice with", a version of a sandwich ("sandwiches probably won't be here", Ben Yehuda defines the future limits of the cut) open, which is fresh bread that has just been cut, and topped with bosha cheese and honey, for example, or butter and jam.
Most of the time there will also be crispy biscotti cookies, and on Fridays, challahs appear that are baked on the stone and get a crust ("It's actually the product with the most work on it," he explained, "but it's very difficult to run a bakery in Israel without challahs on Fridays, and in the end we all want one for dinner" ).
"Smell of morning".
Ben Yehuda (photo: Walla! system, Yaniv Garnot)
A knight with a mutiny.
Hagai and the bread (photo: Walla! system, Yaniv Garnot)
He is anointed and anointed and anointed.
My sticky fingers will testify shortly afterwards that this is the most efficient liquid drainage this neighborhood has ever seen, and certainly the tastiest
At the same time, two huge trays are placed on the work table, holding a tall brioche dough, which will rise even more when it enters the oven, but now receives from Ben Yehuda small cubes of butter on top, and brown sugar, an action that releases caramel aromas into the air even before it actually happens.
The power of guided imagination, the power of fantasy.
The giant oven is working.
On the left the brown chocolate brioche, on the right the classic, and in the middle the obviously impatient wait for 92 degrees.
Ben Yehuda brings from a hidden corner a simple plastic box, containing the kind of citrus syrup that the orange peels and the pomelo of came from Kfar Bilo.
He pulls out the mold - almost three kilos of airiness - and anoints and anoints and anoints. My sticky fingers will testify very shortly afterwards that it is the draining of the most liquid Effective this neighborhood has ever seen, and certainly the most delicious. "Smell of caramel and chocolate," I state the obvious. "Smell of morning," he benefactors.
"This is what we do."
Hagai and the bread (photo: Walla! system, Yaniv Garnot)
The honor of the square.
Hagai and the bread (photo: Walla! system, Yaniv Garnot)
The logo of "Haggai and the Bread", and of Ben Yehuda in fact, is a knight clad in a metal cloak, holding a huge sword, ready for a terrible furnace battle.
It was drawn years ago by a friend, half in jest and half in earnest, and was intended to depict "the defense of the honor of bread or something like that", as he defined it somewhat awkwardly.
One can imagine Don Quixote going on far more unnecessary tasks than these.
One of them - a frustrating bureaucratic confrontation with Israel Customs who refused to release six tons of wheat kernels that came from Michael's unique plot in Bavaria - almost discouraged him, and then actually sharpened his need to continue.
"This is what we do, and this is where we think it is best to channel our energies," he explained, "we were here, right here, a wheat empire in the past, it is most requested that we continue even today."
"Haggai and the Bread", Haim Vital 25, Tel Aviv, 03-6705520
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bread
baguette
brioche
Florentine