Pop-up Croissant 2024, bakery/bread bakery
The morning of Sunday, October 8, put the bread bakery into the same collective shock that gripped the entire State of Israel.
Doors are closed in a rare way, almost unimaginable if you think about the previous 22 years, workers recruited south and north, managers trying to get out of the hell in the wraparound kibbutzim and staff members who gather in their homes and do what we all do in those chaotic hours - hold tight to the walls and children, screens and loved ones, and hope that everything was Just a dream, a nightmare.
Uri Sheft, known to avoid news, stuck headphones in his ears and has not removed them since, with the exception of respites - also only partial, in which he treats his daughter with a division of attention that allows him to still keep up to date with what is happening.
But besides the headphones, he also came to Hasmonean Street in Tel Aviv, and did the only thing he could do at those hours to dull the pain - dough.
French-Israeli.
Croissant crème brûlée from Bread Bakery/Daniel Lila
He has been able to decipher the answers to most of these questions since then.
One of them, naturally, will never be answered
Saturday morning, October 7, caught Yaki Sagi and his wife in a pleasant slumber of a romantic weekend in Acre.
Their children were placed on duty with their parents in Kiryat Motzkin, his bakery was waiting at Kibbutz Bari, and the north, as usual until that morning at least, provided the much-needed silence and the even-more-needed break from everyday life.
That awakening is now recreated by him as an almost impossible mix of a drop of luck in an ocean of sorrow.
In fact, an ocean of luck within an ocean of sorrow.
The ratio is 1:1, but the exact amounts, it seems, are not important now.
The only important thing is the creeping understanding of what is happening at home, 200 km south of there, what is happening to his friends, why exactly he was saved and above all what can be done.
He has been able to decipher the answers to most of these questions since then. One of them, naturally, will never be answered He was able to answer the last question a few weeks later. Like Sheft, of course, it started and ended with dough.
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An immovable classic.
Avocado Croissant of bread bakery/Walla! system, Yaniv Granot
"Everything that didn't need to rise for a long time went into the oven. We took the breads left over from the night, opened baguettes to make sandwiches, and drove south"
"I gathered my two older children, I went inside with them to the 'breads' and we baked everything that could be baked," Sheft recalled that day, "everything that didn't need prolonged rising and didn't require too much time - almond croissants and borax mainly - went into the oven . We took the breads left over from the night, opened baguettes to make sandwiches, and drove south."
This impromptu delegation arrived that day - Black Sunday, as I recall - at Soroka Hospital in Be'er Sheva.
"It was very important to me that my children be seen. We moved from an emergency room to a waiting room and another room and another emergency room and where else. These plays will burn with us forever," he described.
A day later he took the same route and reached the Barzilai Hospital in Ashkelon, and since then he has returned countless times to the area, to soldiers and civilians, to the wounded and evacuees.
In between, he noticed Biki sitting at his house, the house of "Lehamim".
Glaciologists.
Sheft and Shagyi/Daniel Lila
Maybe there, at the parties, is the balance that will allow you to open the bakery two days later and adjust back to the recipe.
Maybe there, without patterns, you can break out of the pattern
The relationship between them goes back quite a bit, and has received tragic blood marks since hell.
"We have mutual friends, the Or family, whose children are abducted in Gaza, and who knew us was murdered. Her husband, Dror, is still abducted," Sheft described the branching family tree through both smiles and tears.
They define themselves as Karakhanists and know also, and mainly, from nature parties.
"Despite our extreme age, we are still kicking, refusing to hang up our shoes," Sagi laughs.
It is hard to imagine these bakers, who would later discover how difficult it was for them to agree on the right olive oil to go into a shared pastry, going bald in the wild.
And actually, like many other things that we have thought about in a certain way until now, maybe it is actually natural.
Maybe there, at the parties, is the balance that will allow you to open the bakery two days later and adjust back to the recipe.
Maybe there, without patterns, you can break out of the pattern.
Pop-up, apparently.
Spanakopita of a bread bakery/Walla! system, Yaniv Granot
They tried several times to create a business relationship and somehow connect "Lehamim" to "Leloosh", Sagi's bakery in Bari.
Finally, life, and death, took their toll.
"Yaki was sitting here, he probably ran away from the hotel of the evacuees," recalled Sheft, "he came to me and asked me to 'just do something', he said 'don't pay me, I want to be a volunteer with you'."
He refused.
"I told him 'no', that if we do something together, it should be something that will benefit both of us, and everyone."
Yaki returned to the hotel in the Dead Sea "with homework", as he defined it.
"He dropped me off at home, told me 'Okay, let's start picking', but insisted, and rightfully so, that we think of something worthy. Not just another tart. Something with added value, that would be exciting. There, in fact, the spanakopita was born."
made by the cruiser.
Spanakopita Croissant of bread bakery/Walla! system, will yield gratuities
"It was one of the checks I was happiest to sign in my life, although when I saw its height I did have to double check"
This predation began with a rather innocent message announcing a "pop-up spanakopita" of a few days, which is all about the collaboration between the two.
"We went down south to extract Dror's cheeses from the Bari dairy, we brought spinach from Ein al-Bashur and Hajabi's eggplants from Moshav Yachini," recounts Sagi, with shining eyes, the birth of the bakery, and in fact the first chapter in the story they were so eager to tell.
"Don't get me wrong, the pastry is Greek and its name is Greek, but we converted it completely," he explained, "and the most important thing is that we managed to make it tasty. Even my children tear it apart. With spinach, yes?".
This pastry-story laughed at the pop-up schedule inside, and three or four days turned into three or four months already, with an exciting visit to the president's house that echoed the exact same story ("The spokeswoman called me and I thought she was making up my mind, my bored friends from the hotel asked "), hundreds of people from the surrounding area waiting to arrive and a promise to the Friday morning parliaments that will only increase the bakery's regular weekend joy here.
"In the beginning it was just the two of us working on it, now there is a whole team, we call it the 'Spanakopita Patrol', and we buy piles of goods from the Otaf to strengthen the farmers," they said, "coming from all over the country, coming to embrace. This nation, they are beyond their strength." .
Sheft agrees and wishes to emphasize that the profits all go to Kibbutz Ari.
"It was one of the checks I was happiest to sign in my life. When I saw his height I had to check twice," he laughs, "but it shows the support of everyone around."
comfort bowl
An onion soup croissant from a bread bakery/Walla! system, will yield a bonus
And so, with the naturalness of calendar pages flipping over as usual, the spanakopita flowed and became a croissant, part of the permanent annual "Breads" pop-up team, which began leveraging International Croissant Day seven years ago, and stopped only when a global epidemic refused to cooperate with the date.
This time, I get an answer straight away, the thoughts were probably more morbid, but their bottom line was uniform and collective.
"Unanimously we said that we are continuing the tradition," explained Sheft, "less with words like celebrations and festival, but we do want to celebrate and be happy and want life to go on, like the rest of us. We don't forget. Absolutely not."
This decision was backed up by more and more inquiries from customers who saw January and wondered when the event was actually happening, and "Lehamim" people make it very clear that this dialogue is alive in them to continue.
"It transmits some kind of power and strength, some kind of mental fortitude. For ourselves, for the employees, for the customers as well," it was explained.
The buzz, the story and the taste.
Spanakopita Croissant of Bread Bakery/Daniel Lila
"We thought we had to continue with it for a moment, both because of the buzz but also because of the story. I put a bite in there, not for anything, it's still going to stay here forever"
The menu (NIS 35-49), which will be offered here until tomorrow (Friday), includes engineering-exaggerated, jaw-challenging croissant monsters that require the ability to withstand pressure and the ability to succumb to corruption, a familiar combination of classics that must return every year in a different mess, of innovations on the brink of genius, and a drop of The necessary emotion that is Yaki and Uri, together.
The first category includes an avocado and feta croissant with micro leaves ("Shaori Hanavit", Holshen), chili and pickled lemon, a chocolate-banana-pecan croissant filled with pastry cream and topped with crumbled pecans and almonds, and a strawberry croissant and pastry cream with cream and a chocolate-dipped note.
The second category includes two winter stars in the form of an onion soup croissant covered with gruyere cheese shavings and a soft berry slice on top, which is also a version dipped into a comforting bowl, and a lovely crème brûlée croissant on the fly, which was born back in Scheft's days in New York.
The third is of course a spanakopita croissant that started as a test and ended in fainting.
"The same filling goes into the croissant, and a sheet of phyllo on top gets a crust," describes Sagi, "you give a bite of textures there and it's wow."
Judge nods.
"We thought we had to continue with it for a while, both because of the buzz but also because of the story. I put a bite in there, not for anything, it's still going to stay here forever."
"Strength to continue".
A banana-chocolate croissant from a bakery of breads/Walla! system, will yield gratuities
A few months ago, Sheft and Sagi traveled south, passed through the Nova party site and continued into Bari.
"We drove right under fire to the bakery and I felt like I was no longer entering my kibbutz, but a military base," he described.
He took from "Leloosh" the binders that held his recipes, showed the judge the bakery and the house and tried to explain how he felt that day, from a distance.
"They captured our kibbutz. They looted, broke, destroyed, took everything nearby. It was not caught."
Sheft describes a place "as if it was suddenly abandoned", although the word "as if" is probably unnecessary.
Sagi recalls the 20 kg of cream that is still waiting to be whipped "and it must have already turned into butter" and once again makes sure to have a "sharp transition", as he defines it. , a real family.
I have no words, and even the one that works and succeeds, everything here will be woven with responses from the kibbutz that I give them strength to continue.
We are being surrounded, so shall we not continue?"
"Mandatory to normality".
Croissant crème brûlée of a bread bakery/Walla! system, will yield grains
At night the demons come out of the depths of Sagi's head and attack.
The first minutes of the morning are also impossible.
Half an hour later, as much as it is enough for him to get organized and get to the bakery to "touch the material", is enough to calm down.
Such a conversation, as we did, drags back again, and brings out the tears.
how not.
"These days, a lot of potatoes are taken out of Barry and there are already thoughts about the next thing", he weaves plans and future calorie traps, "maybe playing with knish and all kinds of bites and full of fried onions in a pilas dough".
Maybe, hopefully.
Sheft directs his thoughts to work, "plowing deep in the business", a beautiful new branch in the Tel Aviv nursery neighborhood, right in Ramat Hasharon ("If the beginning is indicative of the continuation, we are very satisfied"), and daily dealing with the challenges of the times, including a rather dramatic entry into Volt and its deliveries.
"People generously donated to us from abroad and asked us to continue and continue and continue with this supportive move, companies embraced us and gave us another boost to go with the spanakopita as much as possible, but days like yesterday really remind you what it's really about.
I was standing downstairs, working on the croissants for the pop-up, and suddenly a swarm of people and customers arrive in the basement, in our production area," he described the last alarm in Tel Aviv, "I didn't understand why they were here and only after a few seconds I remembered what kind of time we live in now, all of us."
For him, "You do what you do just to not think about all this stuff around, but this time there was no desire to disconnect.
I felt that I had an obligation to open, an obligation to normality, I told the employees that those who could - should come, believing that we must continue, whatever is possible.
The order of the hour."
And so this challenge and this duty remagnetized him to the core, Vicky meets him at this point every morning. "Thanks to him, yes", they say almost simultaneously. Thanks to them.
Croissant pop-up, bread bakery, until Friday (February 2), 10:00-14:00, Hashmonaim 103, Tel Aviv
More on the same topic:
breads
croissant
Uri Sheft
Kibbutz Ari