The essence of craftsmanship: the baker
Episode 1 of the Forest Walk podcast
Below you find an article based on the conversation I had with Silvester Kuiper on the subject of craftsmanship and how he fulfils his professional live. You can listen the podcast on Soundcloud or subscribe at iTunes.
If things go wrong, ok then so be it but if you don’t know what just happened, then you have a very big problem. — Silvester Kuiper
Intro
On our maiden episode of the Forest Walk Podcast, I interviewed professional baker and barbecue grill master Silvester Kuiper who is renowned for his famous sourdough bread. He is a craftsman whose hands can make what his mind thinks. He tells us what that means for him and the driving force that comes from within. We can learn from the way he coaches others in embracing his vision and contributing to his work and how letting go stimulates them to take their roles. And finally, what it means to be an outcast and how being different can help you in being special.
From an early age, Silvester has always seen himself as a creative person and he knew that he wanted to work with his hands.
Born a dyslectic, Silvester found it hard to concentrate in school as he was easily distracted, he found it difficult to follow the rules and live up to certain expectations. The one subject he had straight A’s in however was art class, according to him:
“It’s like, you know, drawing in your head without having a piece of paper, it’s just like doing things and making things in your mind and then translate that through your hands.“
Even then, he never thought he was special in any way, and just assumed that was how everyone processed information. He found out that even though he could understand what he was being taught, it never came out the way it was expected of him.
By age 17 Silvester began working at his family owned bakery while he attended school. This was a very difficult time for him as he had to cope with certain boundaries and learn how to work with others and taking instructions even when he felt he could do better. It was around this time that Silvester decided he want to do something for himself, become self-employed and eventually run his own company.
However, the bakery business didn’t look like the right place to achieve his dreams and Silvester was against the idea of taking over the responsibility of running the bakery. Growing up in a bakery family, he had seen its ups and downs. Moreover, the bakery had more or less been the same for three generations. Then Silvester had an idea that made him change his mind and changed everything else.
Bakeries tend to be traditional family owned businesses with little changing with each pass down the line. Silvester and his wife decided to take over the bakery but with a twist. Experience had taught him one thing
“the bakery is like, you know, like a closed-in service, that’s it how it’s always been, it never changes, never change a winning team” Change was however what it needed. “The store used to be fairly traditional, we now have a store where people can shop for themselves, they can just walk around and see all the products. The level of service keeps increasing as a result of that”
This system creates an environment which makes it much more comfortable for people to ask very specific questions about ingredients or allergies and that’s an upcoming thing in the world. Today, people want to know what they’re eating.
Our discussion moved on to his famous sourdough which is an original recipe of his. Silvester in fact has a large collection of sourdough bread.
However, Sourdough didn’t catch on nearly as easily as you would have thought:
“I started about 10 years ago before people in the Netherlands were even introduced to sourdough, there were a lot of naysayers and for me that was a trigger to go ‘yes’. It took me about a year to start from scratch to a sellable product and if you have a sellable product it’s not like you put it on the shelf and it will go, it takes time and it takes nurturing, so what I did was I baked great amounts of it and then on Saturdays I would just stand in the bakery store, slice it and tell people about it, make them acquainted with the flavor, make them acquainted with the process, make them acquainted with the purity of the product. So, I did that for about half a year and then it finally landed and it started on to become like it is now. It’s like 50 percent of the sale we’re making in the shop, so I think it’s pretty successful.”
Running a successful bakery isn’t as delicious as it sounds and good employees are hard to come by. Silvester however has his own method of selecting and training his workers. This includes giving personalized training while they slowly get acquainted with the company structure and develop their own skill set. At this point he gives them room to explore, telling them what he wants done and monitoring from a distance. This makes it possible for him to take time off work and focus on his health. It has also given the business a breath of fresh air, making it grow.
Silvester himself is the fourth generation in a line of bakers and he has a wealth of skills and experiences to draw from. His father died when he was 19 so he had to rely mostly on his artistic gift which he sees as a natural process. “I could just make a recipe in my head and know exactly what the flavor would be, instead of thinking about the products or resources that I have, I was like actually putting flavors together.” When asked how he obtain this ability, he chalks it all up to his inborn skill.
I doesn’t end in bread with Silvester, he is also a barbecue grill master. He started barbecuing as a hobby and got fascinated with American style barbecue, meat smoking and the whole culture surrounding it. “At the time, I felt I needed something different, totally different for two reasons; One is, I want to do something fun” the second was to prevent baker’s (writer’s) block (it’s a thing). As with baking, barbecuing was something Silvester excelled at. So far he has created two special rolls using barbecue and bread from his bakery.
We also go to hear about the future plans of his bakery. According to Silvester:
“So, we start from scratch and from there we get our own chutneys, our own sauces our own flavors and it’s very exciting. As for the barbecue catering company, well, I see that by the end of this year we be able to do two locations at one time or we can do like one very large festival with the setups we have now.”
It’s well know that Silvester is very good at one liners and is almost religious in teaching some of your learnings and life lessons. He shared the following with our listeners:
“stick to your own beliefs”
“seekers of truth follow no paths because all paths will lead there”
“the more people tell “no” believe them as “yes”
“if people treat you like an outcast there is something in you which scares them and people are scared what they don’t know”
“As I kid I always remember that I didn’t fit in a group, I didn’t fit in the masses, I didn’t fit in the figures, in the state as how it should be, and I just go my own way. But all the things we have even the thing we were going to use would come from people who didn’t care, who just go the wrong way or anywhere different from the rest. I mean, isn’t different from the rest, the best thing in life? I think it is.”
- Silvester Kuiper
Next episode will be with Rohan Nichols, a programmer and very passionate about his crafts and a great guy to talk with, with his Canadian roots and background in philosophy it will be an interesting conversation. So, looking forward to that. Thanks and I hope you’ll listen next time.
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