The preparation days are intensive. Isabel García (Arnedo, La Rioja, 22 years old) gets up at 4:30 and leaves the workshop around 8:00 p.m. “You have to give 120% to be up there with the best,” she says with conviction, while she finishes breads and pieces of flaky pastries. That desire to improve is what also led her, as she believes, to become third in the Spanish Artisan Baking Championship last February at just 21 years old. She was the only woman in the photograph and at the time of the interview she is training to represent Spain in the International Young Bakers Championship in Reykjavík (held from June 3 to 6) as one of the two members of the first women’s team that has been submitted to the contest. They were runners-up. “The prototype of a baker is an older man. “People see a young girl and it shocks them,” she says.
García attributes the success of his Instagram account, which he opened at the age of 14 with the sole purpose of showing his creations straight out of the oven, to this unusual profile. At that time, her only training was self-taught through tests in the family kitchen and the purchase of books such as Homemade bread, by Ibán Yarza. In the workshop amateur The one he set up at home made do with a “little stone oven that only held two one-kilo loaves” and a KitchenAid stand mixer. “I made a lot of bad bread, but screwing up and being a perfectionist, not stopping until I get what I want, has made me reach this great level,” she reflects, while going from one side of the bakery to the other. School Subjectin Madrid, where she is preparing for the championship with her partner, Mónica Rufián.
Now she feeds more than ever that Instagram profile—with more than 18,000 followers—which was the showcase for many colleagues to notice her work, inviting her to be one of the guild. A circle, that of the artisan bakery, which is basically small and in which its name, when mentioned, is seen by veterans such as Jesús Machi or Yohan Ferrant as one of the most promising in the profession today. Ferrant, in fact, was Isabel García’s teacher in the Master of Excellence in Artisan Baking and Pastries at the Baking School Barcelona Sabadell. “She is a student who lets you know that the future of the bakery is in good hands: she is passionate, curious and disciplined,” says Ferrant, who also serves as director of the school, a reference center in the sector. “I’m happy for her, that she’s making championships. “Triumph does not come from what you win but from what you lose,” he concludes.
That reading of defeat, whether in a competition or in daily practice, is the same one that Isabel García repeats like a mantra. “José [Roldán, el seleccionador del equipo nacional] She tells me that coming first would have hurt me,” she says, although she does not hide that she always works “to be first” and that, in some way, being third seems “like a loser” to her. The real reward has come to her by having the opportunity to become a Spike, as the members of the team are called. “It’s like being signed by Real Madrid,” she compares.
The portrait that this young woman who studied marketing as a plan B paints of herself is that of a constant, methodical and obstinate person to the point of obsession. “My first sourdough teacher, Juan Luis Estévez, always tells me that I was one of the toughest students he had,” she points out. At that time, her breads came out “acidic, flat, without the fermentative power of the sourdough,” but she was already aware of the attraction she felt for “playing with living matter every day.” She dedicated her summers to working and visiting leading bakeries throughout the country: Panem and Marea Bread, in Madrid; Domi Vélez, in Lebrija; Pandemonium, in Vigo; Madre Tierra, in Valdemoro, or Jordi Morera, in Barcelona. Now she is the one preparing the opening of her own establishment in her hometown. “There isn’t a day that I don’t go out that they don’t ask me when the bakery is ready,” she says.
![Unmolding a puff pastry crown with a two-color technique.](https://imagenes.elpais.com/resizer/v2/7T5XXF7BDNF2NPUEVI6KM6W3TE.jpg?auth=15fe9a026416a2fe24fd46471ad994eebb90a234fc95e011259d0c4193ecd6c8&width=414)
If the forecasts are met, García will lift the shutters of his business at the end of this year. In it he wants to unite well-made traditional bread with the most careful and gourmet product. He also knows that there will be no shortage of a good daily loaf and that the loaves will all be cultured sourdough. He also says that he will offer careful pastries with quality French butter. “The majority is industrial, it is pre-cooked, put in the oven and that’s it. “People are used to a bun smeared with syrup to mask the terrible taste.” At a table, he assures, one cannot be missing baguette and a croissant.
I could have chosen the easy way out. He could have chosen to hold a position in the family business—dedicated to footwear—but García chose to take a risk with a job with untimely hours and little value. Work dynamics are changing, in part, thanks to technology, although in his still short journey he has verified that the feeling of exhaustion abounds in the union: “Many bakers I speak with are burned out because they don’t know how to run the business. “Something that you love ends up hating,” he reflects, while he continues to go back and forth from one oven to another, while unmolding or cleaning the work table. She wants to enjoy what she likes most, for the business to do well, to make money with what she does. Is she world champion? “Well, I hope so.”
![A phase in the preparation of the so-called royal crown.](https://imagenes.elpais.com/resizer/v2/BB5C75KEPVC2HJDDQBKVYNWI4E.jpg?auth=283544a1194c786b9444e171af8e0935a53a3fb06bcf4469c1aec6270c691fa7&width=414)
On one of the tray carts in the workshop rests one of the creations of which she feels most proud. Max is the name of a creative cork-shaped piece of pastry made with brioche dough and made with different fillings. It is a nod to his land, La Rioja, the common thread of the pieces that she presented to the Spanish championship, but also the representation of that tenacity that he speaks of. “I threw 50 kilos of flour until I managed to make it. But there is the cork,” she says proudly. For that occasion, her hands also molded a bicolor puff pastry crown filled with Los Cameros Rioja cheese or a decorative flower-shaped bread. On the work table stands an artistic piece approximately one meter high. A small edible sculpture in honor of the bread that García created for the national contest and that she and her partner will take, again, to the international one.
She represents a new generation of bakers who do not want to repeat the mistakes of past generations and who, beyond the necessary day-to-day learning, have trained to achieve technical perfection and not let that limit their imagination. Of course, she points out that training in baking today, to be cutting edge, has to be in a private school. “In vocational training they give you a baking manual,” she says. The training day is about to end, but she hasn’t lost her attitude. “If you have a shitty day, it comes out on your bread.”
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