"Ten years ago, nobody knew us. We applauded when the first order, came in" recalls Jaroslav Kozdělka, head baker at Prague's Eska
A bakery and kitchen full of life
What is your very first memory of Eska?
There are more. The first is the memory of standing in the prep room at the Four Seasons and calling my former colleague Monica Drasner, who along with others opened Eska, to tell her that I was quitting the hotel. And she told me to call the chef Martin Štangl, who was looking for a replacement.
And the others?
Then I remember my first bread test. It was great, but only for an hour, then became so hard you could cut glass with it. Eska is also the place where I started drinking coffee. At 30 years old. Ondra Štökl, then head barista at Eska and now head barista at Ambiente, showed me what good coffee tastes like.
You've been baking at Eska since 2018. Is there anything else that surprises you about baking today?
Surprises happen every day. For example. the variable speed at which the oven is heated, or the difference between the first and second batch of bread. And then, of course, the people - both guests and staff. Every day we encounter situations from which we can learn. But precisely because every day is different, I never stop enjoying the work. Before I started as a pastry chef - less than three years after I started at Eska as sous chef - I knew nothing about baking. I started studying the chemistry of flour at home, read three theses on flour and am still learning today. There are dozens of aspects that determine the final product.
Would you say Eska has changed in any way in those 10 years?
When it opened, it was a restaurant with a bakery. Today, it's a bakery with a kitchen, so it's a Carlsbad business.The Letná location is a bakery with a shop and coffee.
And in terms of ingredients?
Over the years, we have completely switched to organic flour. It was a struggle to get there, because at first none of us understood bio-flour. We had to find our own way to it. Today we take all our flour from Probio, who are great to work with.
How is organic flour better?
Although it is more challenging to work with, we are convinced that it is better quality and tastier. It is not standardised, so each batch behaves a little differently. You could say that with every batch we learn to bake a little bit again.
You're also known for your close relationships with small farmers.
In Karlin, we had a wonderful collaboration with Mr. Hecht years ago. He supplies us with tomatoes and has also shown us a lot of home-grown produce that no one else has. The eggs from Kubat are definitely worth mentioning. They are the only ones who can supply us with quality eggs in such large quantities.
And that's how many?
In Letná, 1300 a week, in Karlín, 5000.
What else do you think Eska has given to Ambiente, Prague and the whole gastro scene over the years?
The best bread around, and especially the return of the craft of baking. For me, it is still a big task to elevate this craft so that it is attractive to people. When we opened, we started focusing on the local market, fermenting and generally doing things differently. Eska was the first coffee place, the kind of place that didn't put sugar in the coffee. (laughs) That's been dropped, of course. A reconciliation has been found. And then there's the restaurant Štangl, which came out of Eska.
Were you the first place with artisan bread in Prague?
I don't know, but we were definitely the first to bake and still baking in a wood-fired oven. Bakers don't really want to do that because the efficiency is lower. But the quality of the bread is different.
In a 2019 interview you said there's not much interest in the baking industry. Has that changed?
Unfortunately, not much. Although now here (ed. note: at Eska Letná) we have young boys who are interested. But some years, the schools don't even open classes for baker/baker. It's also a matter of practice. If the boys and girls didn't go on their own initiative for part-time jobs, they would have almost no practice.
What is it?
It's physically physically demanding job if you want to do it the way it's supposed to be done. You're on your feet all day. Sometimes it's done at night, which people don't want to do these days. We've tried to change that and work only during the day, but it's not working. The oven can't get cold, so we bake at night.
The oven never gets cold?
Exactly. We only let it cool down when it needs repairs or servicing. Which is what happens about once a year. The roasters from Italy come in and re-spray the kiln with baker's hops. The stone naturally burns out and needs to be restored.
What would you use to motivate young people who are thinking about a career in gastronomy to come and bake for you?
I hope it's slowly turning around. That kids want to do crafts again. In baking, you work with your hands, so you can turn your head off for a while. The digital world is catching up with us everywhere, but in baking a little less. However, interest in manual work always rises for a while and then falls again. I would like to tell young people that we try to do it honestly, but it is work, yes.
What factors influence the final bread?
First of all, the flour. As I said before - each batch of bio-flour behaves differently. Next, water temperature and definitely the human factor - Each of us perceives, for example, the stiffness or thinness of the dough differently. Bread is hand-rolled in our country and each of us develops a different speed, strength and style. And then of course the oven - we bake on radiant heat, so the stone accumulates the heat from the fire. Radiant heat is diametrically opposed to the static heat generated by, for example, an electric oven.
And how does working with bread affect the baker?
If you like baking, it affects you a lot. A baker must not come to work angry or he won't make good bread. It's a living product - literally. That's why a good baker should care about every loaf.
When we arranged the interview, you were just heading to physical therapy. To what extent is such care part of the baking profession?
Physio or sport is important in the catering industry. All of its disciplines are physically and mentally demanding, and compensation is necessary. Physiotherapy is also beneficial in the sense that professionals can tell us what to do differently so that our arms and legs don't hurt. They can advise us how to stand and how to move.
Can you remember any mistakes over the years?
There have been! And they will continue to happen. For example, a person slips in line and adds ten times the amount of salt to the dough, doesn't taste the dough and then wonders why it didn't rise. Or the baker accidentally floods before he takes out the previous batch of bread and burns the loaves.
Has there ever been a time when such a mistake resulted in no bread at all?
We once we had to throw away a whole batch, a hundred loaves. Fortunately, we bake 4-6 loaves each time, so there's always bread. We also had a case a few years ago where the flour stopped working, it was wheat bread flour because it was poorly stored. We sorted it out with the miller and after a fortnight we got a result. Because of the different storage method, the flour started to behave differently.
Eska on Letná opened nine years after the one in Karlin. With what experience did you go into it?
We tried to draw on the experience we had gained, including all the possible mistakes we had made over the years. Specifically we separated the production from the baking at Letná. That way we don't have to wait for the bread from the table to go into the oven, like in Karlín. When we built Eska in Karlin ten years ago, we would not have thought that the business would run so well. When I took over the bakery from Aleš Karpíšek, the head baker at the time, in 2018, he told me that the maximum number of breads that can be made in a day is 350. Today we are able to bake 700 loaves. We also have a bigger refrigerated box. So we don't transfer the bread from the trolleys to the boxes, but the trolleys fit straight into the cold room.
How was the opening different, apart from the fact that you experienced Karlin as a sous chef?
The opening was completely different. 10 years ago, nobody knew about us. We applauded at the first bong: the slip that the set uses to tell the chefs when they've ordered.) with the order in the kitchen. And the bread was still being tuned for three or four months. We were making weekly testing - and the result was today's Bread 33 a 66, the only two loaves we're selling now.
What do you wish Eska for the years to come?
To keep baking such good bread. And that people keep coming back and keep the smiles on their faces, that makes us happy.
