Difference between revisions of "Talk:Open Bread"

Revision as of 11:33, 10 July 2005

Here is the on-going discussion of the Open Bread project. Use the plus sign next to the edit tab/button to add a comment. You need to be logged in to do it, but that is a breeze.

Copenhagen bread expert found

Jakob Bondesen is a bread-baking professional cook, who also is interested in the project. I (Olle) talked with him yesterday (June 27, 2005), and he was attracted to the idea of helping out.

"Why don't people learn to bake at home, instead?" was his first reaction, though.

I could only answer that with a reference to the regular human consumerist weakness, or with the positive aspects of division of labour. Neither of which were really successful, in the light of his: "Think of all the ovens out there, in people's homes. Why buy an industrial-strength oven on top of that?"

Lunchtime Discussion

My colleagues Johnny, Dan, Steven and Nate had a long, wide-ranging discussion about the "open bread idea" today during lunch at the Formosa Tea House.

Some points raised:

• There was considerable skepticism about the idea: how is this different (and any better) than the "normal" way of starting a business? from a cooperative baker?
• What is the value of doing something "out in the open" and what does that mean?
• Who's going to actually bake the bread?
• Are we looking for a bakery or simply bread -- in other words, have we specified the engine, and not the destination.
• Echoing Olle's earlier comment, Dan wondered whether the collected ovens of the community couldn't be put to work.
• Nate raised concerns about whether the application of open source to the "real world" will survive the transition to "products" that the incremental cost of isn't zero.

We'll continue to talk.

Notes from a Copenhagen dinner-table

1. Flour. The qual of the flour is paramount. Using processed flour is... out of the question, according to local Copenhagen experts. "It is impossible to get to any good level of home-baked bread using the same flour as the factory bakeries. You need to import."

2. What is the bread history of PEI? What resources has this fishing community used in the past to make bread? If the culture of baking good bread has never reached PEI - perhaps due to the fact that the people settling the land a couple of hundred years ago came from mountainous regions of Europe, where there were no real bread culture - Open Bread needs to find a cultural analog in another part of the world, and use its bread culture. Off the top of my head: Japan, eastern part of India, Arab countries.

3. What kind of customers does Open Bread in Charlottetown want? I am thinking of coops as primary targets for larger customers.

4. Pro vs. DIY. In Italy - a super-urban culture forged during 2.000 years - all bread is made by professionals, even in the smallest villages. The rest of the Mediterranean is largely supplied with amateur-baked bread. The pros have real ovens, which create bread of a different level of quality; another world. The bread baked by the pros in Italy was built to last, but the bread made by the family in the rest of the Med was made to be fresh. Important distinction. What kind of bread is interesting to buy in Charlottetown, and what kinds of customers are interesting to Open Bread?

5. Ethic bread. When Open Bread is a brand name that can be used as an umbrella, get more people in the ring. Ethnic differences make for different ways of using flour: people from Iran and Iraq make different bread from Danes and Finns. With globalization, we - the people - need to find ways to make it viable for these people to market bread from their cultures. In Copenhagen, I heard anecdotal evidence of a family that ran a cottage industry bakery in their home kitchen.