I’m hungry and I have a craving for yummy, tasty bread!
Time is not on my side, it’s late and the only culture I have at home is in my music collection – which can’t help me make my own sour-dough bread.
It actually doesn’t take much to make your own fresh steamy loaf of bread. The more ingredients used, the more interesting it gets but this is entirely up to the maker.
But it does take time – lots of time. Especially when you first make your yeast culture – then you need to plan a couple of days for it to rise and grow. But what do I do now about my rumbling tummy – where do I go?
All the closed bakeries don’t make me feel any better.
But then… there at the corner of Schottenfeldgasse/Bernardgasse I make a discovery! A bread machine – filled with bread, but not just any bread – it’s filled with bread from the Felzl bakery!
What a great idea, especially for those who always find their bread box empty in the evening when shops are already closed. Resourcefulness is also a big issue to the Felzl bakery that puts lots of time and love into their products. It all began when Kathrina Dankl started the project to reduce food waste – but she was not alone.
Two years ago, it was not yet clear what would become of her principle “bread is too valuable to through away”.
She put together a team of people from different fields of expertise to cover the whole scope of this project: Horst Felzel, Thomas Hruschka, Wolfgang Wimmer and Andrea Lunzer and Angie Rattay as project staff.
The birth of the bread machine
To evaluate the project’s potential and to create awareness, a survey was conducted in the surroundings by Wolfgang Wimmer.
The question was: how much bread comes back?
The results showed that 16% of the weekly bread production were returned goods which equates to the Sundays’ production. Much too much – especially when you consider that the amount of bread that is wasted in Austria’s second biggest city, Graz (“We feed the World”).
There has been a reduction in the percentage by 45% ever since the launch of the bread machine in October 2014 – what a great success!
On one hand the wasting of bread is prevented, on the other hand lovers of baked goods can shop at night from 8 p.m. till 6 in the morning – even 30% cheaper than during store hours. The bakery Felzl benefits from this project and of course the environment, too.
My big shout out to the world is I love bread! The project called “I love Brot”! Is the first case study by “Less! Zukunftsfähiges Design” and is supported by “Wiener Kreativagentur departure” and the Vienna Business Agency.
Pictures: Kathrina Dankl
