Xavier Barriga: "If we want bakers, bread has to be made during the day, not at night"

It smells like fresh bread.

The Turris workshop in the Chamberí neighborhood of Madrid begins to function.

It is the first bakery that the group has opened outside of Catalonia, where it has 28 stores.

Xavier Barriga (Barcelona, ​​53 years old) interrupts work to attend EL PAÍS.

There are only a few hours left before he opens to the public —he does so this Wednesday, February 1—, with a workshop in sight so that the clientele can see how the bakers work, three in total.

A profession that Barriga defends and that he tries to dignify.

He doesn't believe in sacrifices, it's more about ennobling a trade he's grown up with.

"I was born in a bakery, at the age of 14 I started making bread and I'm still there," he says.

And he runs away from clichés.

He warns that there are few professionals who want to dedicate themselves to the bakery trade.

“If we say that it is hard work, nobody is going to want to work at it, and it is a job like any other.

If we want bakers, bread must be made during the day, not at night, and in Turris we do it that way.

It's hard to get bakers."

Because the secret of a good bread, he adds, in addition to the hours of fermentation (in this case, 48 hours at very mild temperatures and always in linen cloth), good flour and the use of sourdough, is found in taking care of the staff.

“Here they work the regulatory hours and on Sundays and holidays we close.

Bread, if it's good, lasts a long time.

The large pieces, with long fermentations, remain fresh for two or three days”, explains Barriga.

With this opening begins an expansion plan outside of Catalonia, for which it has relied on the venture capital fund Realza Capital, which last year became a shareholder of the group by acquiring just over 50% of the shares of Turris, in until then hands of Barriga and Manel Sellarés, former director of Europastry.

The objective of this operation is the expansion of this network of artisan bread workshops, created in 2008, when Barriga opened its first bread workshop on Aribau street, in Barcelona, ​​and which will continue with the opening in the second quarter of the year of another bakery on Calle de Hermosilla, in the heart of the Salamanca district of Madrid.

“We have been in Barcelona for 15 years and it is conquered.

It is the natural step, growing up in Madrid, where there is a

bakery

Freshly made loaves in the Turris workshop in Madrid.

He believes that growth as a company does not mean a reduction in the quality of the product.

“We do not make industrial bread, our obligation is to maintain that artisan component, and even if we grow we continue to make quality bread.

Bad bread is made because there is a rush in the production process, and productivity takes precedence over the time it takes to make it”.

Because his work, he adds, talks about people, trade, patience, creativity, sustainability and respect for the client.

In this sense, he points out that the rise in the prices of raw materials, especially butter, whose price has increased by more than 80%, and flour, which has risen one hundred percent at its highest peak, has had an impact on the bakery's margin.

“It seems that the rise in prices has slowed down a bit.

We have made a discreet rise in prices,

but we have not been able to increase them to the same extent that it has affected us.

Our breads have adjusted prices”.

At the counter of the Turris bakery, whose offer is completed with pastry and pastry products, the prices of the 15 varieties with which it arrives in Madrid shine: thus, for example, the loaf of bread costs 1.40 euros and the kilo of loaf comes to 4.75 euros.