By Sabrina Cuculiansky

The new wave of Argentine bakeries comes from the hand of a young generation that seeks innovation for the future in the past. The updating of the trade implies the rescue of ancestral techniques, product quality, new ingredients, author details and a greater specialty that leads to differentiation.

In this change, women also begin to lead the work in the block, the space of the bakery in which bread and pastries are made and cooked. Until recently, the lack of opportunities for women was general in gastronomy. But in the bakeries it was worse. The tasks that remained for the bakers were those related to pastry, details or customer service. But this is changing.

With the vindication of the current bakery, new specialty bakeries emerged, made up of more women. A reflection of the situation, associated with the moment of the trade that implies the return to the sourdough and rethinking the ways of kneading.

Buenos Aires bakers

In the City of Buenos Aires, there are more and more bakers and pastry chefs projects in which women play a leading role: Maggie Marquevich is the head of the bakery at Piani by La Margueritte, and Juliana Juárez of Atelier Fuerza; Tuni Oviedo commands Malcriada; Sofía Jungberg is one of the owners and pastry chef of La Kitchen; Estefanía Maiorano stands out in the bakery and pastry shop of Narda Comedor; Sol Eskenazi, Martina Schvarzstein and Camila Malvido created and run La Garage; Melisa Baratta and Sofía Podestá lead Cerca Deli, to name a few.

"In some of the jobs that I had had, I fulfilled a leadership role but without being recognized," recalls Juliana Juárez, head of bakery at Atelier Fuerza. Today, I work with an incredible team of bakers and we are 5 women. We have made enormous progress, we make very large productions, without losing the quality of the product, which seems to me a gigantic achievement ”, he says.

Local consumption

In Argentina, bread has a marked presence in everyday life; 77% of Argentines consume it on a daily basis or at least once a week, and 8 out of 10 consumers expect to maintain their level of bread consumption in the future. The most sought after by consumers is the interest in the freshness of the product, then the price and the taste.