'It's hard to cook in a war zone': Kyiv bakery continues to make up to 1,000 loaves a day
Bakery has always been an act of creation for me. And I didn't consider myself a creator until I baked my first sourdough bread. The bakery that I co-founded and named The Bakehouse is an artisan bakery in Kyiv, Ukraine. We have been baking sourdough bread and making delicious pastries since 2015. We pioneered long-fermentation sourdough bread in Ukraine, and in October 2021 we finally opened our brand new bakery - Bakehouse Garage - in the district of Podil in Kyiv. This is my dream bakery, and we spent three years and $1.5 million building it. But during the first days of the war, we had bombings and explosions just a few kilometers away, so we had to close it on February 24. Instead, we were cooking in the basement of the old bakery.
Since the third day of the war, my team has baked bread and given it for free to our soldiers, hospitals, people in towns and villages injured by Russians and the elderly in Kyiv. Our bakers make 450 to 1,000 charity loaves every day. And we'll keep cooking them for as long as our country needs them.
It's hard to cook in a war zone. Finding and delivering good ingredients is difficult, and not all of our team members are able to come to work.
Women face a different challenge : many of us, especially those with young children have left Kyiv and moved to western Ukraine or abroad so as not to have to hear sirens or go to bomb shelters with babies and toddlers dozens of times a day. So many chefs, bakers and office workers (mostly women) have left the country. And no one knows when we will return.
I believe that no citizen of the world should remain silent and indifferent to the terror of war. My gratitude to all the bakers who have invested their time and attention in creating Knead Peace – the book that contains my sourdough recipe, which you will also find below – knows no bounds. We bakers create. And this is the complete opposite of what the fascist aggressors do on a daily basis. We need peace, so let's knead it.
Anna Makievska left Ukraine with her two children after the Russian invasion and is currently based in Portugal . She remains involved in the daily operations of The Bakehouse.
Flax Seed SourdoughFlax Seed Bread, or The Flax, as we began to calling it soon as it became popular among our customers, was the first bread we baked with my recipe on a commercial scale. Flax is high in fiber, loaded with omega-3 fatty acids and it can be sourced locally. So let's cut to the chase: here's our most popular bread recipe.
Bakery has always been an act of creation for me. And I didn't consider myself a creator until I baked my first sourdough bread. The bakery that I co-founded and named The Bakehouse is an artisan bakery in Kyiv, Ukraine. We have been baking sourdough bread and making delicious pastries since 2015. We pioneered long-fermentation sourdough bread in Ukraine, and in October 2021 we finally opened our brand new bakery - Bakehouse Garage - in the district of Podil in Kyiv. This is my dream bakery, and we spent three years and $1.5 million building it. But during the first days of the war, we had bombings and explosions just a few kilometers away, so we had to close it on February 24. Instead, we were cooking in the basement of the old bakery.
Since the third day of the war, my team has baked bread and given it for free to our soldiers, hospitals, people in towns and villages injured by Russians and the elderly in Kyiv. Our bakers make 450 to 1,000 charity loaves every day. And we'll keep cooking them for as long as our country needs them.
It's hard to cook in a war zone. Finding and delivering good ingredients is difficult, and not all of our team members are able to come to work.
Women face a different challenge : many of us, especially those with young children have left Kyiv and moved to western Ukraine or abroad so as not to have to hear sirens or go to bomb shelters with babies and toddlers dozens of times a day. So many chefs, bakers and office workers (mostly women) have left the country. And no one knows when we will return.
I believe that no citizen of the world should remain silent and indifferent to the terror of war. My gratitude to all the bakers who have invested their time and attention in creating Knead Peace – the book that contains my sourdough recipe, which you will also find below – knows no bounds. We bakers create. And this is the complete opposite of what the fascist aggressors do on a daily basis. We need peace, so let's knead it.
Anna Makievska left Ukraine with her two children after the Russian invasion and is currently based in Portugal . She remains involved in the daily operations of The Bakehouse.
Flax Seed SourdoughFlax Seed Bread, or The Flax, as we began to calling it soon as it became popular among our customers, was the first bread we baked with my recipe on a commercial scale. Flax is high in fiber, loaded with omega-3 fatty acids and it can be sourced locally. So let's cut to the chase: here's our most popular bread recipe.
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