Stories

Rudy's mouth-watering book

January 1, 1970

Meet Rudy Dekker, the baker from Zwolle. His yummy Instagram account took us by storm and we’ve been following his mouth-watering feed ever since. Rudy decided to share a few of his dreamy recipes in a Once Upon book and the results are as delicious as we’d hoped!

Written by Rudy Dekker

@baking_bread_nl

How his passion for baking started

The love for baking began when Rudy was just a little boy and always baked delicious goodies with his grandmother. “I already knew back then that my heart was made for baking,” Rudy laughs. He actually started as a helper in a bakery when he was only 12 years old and from that point he was completely in love with the craft. “As I’ve been working in a bakery since I was 12 years old it has become a passion of mine to bake great,” says Rudy. He rolled out of the bakery business a few years ago, but he still bakes a lot at home.

The bread master

Rudy is a bread-making-master. But he loves to bake a lot of different things: pastries, pizza, cookies and so on. “Baking calms me down, knowing you are working with something that is alive and has to be taken care of as if it was a baby. If you neglect it, it doesn’t turn out as nice.”

Three tips to make the perfect sourdough bread:

1
The time

Take your time, don't rush, fermentation can't be pushed.

2
The quality

Use good quality ingredients, if you can go to a local mill for good quality flour.

3
The starter

Know your starter (the starter is wild yeast and a bacteria called lactobacilli, it’s what makes the sourdough bread rise). How long does it take for it to be active? Something you should know before starting the baking!

And of course... Rudy’s tips to make a photo book about your passion:

Take a lot of pictures from start to finish, you can always decide not to use them but you can't redo them.

Also add closeup pictures as they bring something extra to the book.

Read the texts well before sending in your order and maybe let someone else read it too. I found a word in my texts that didn't belong there, and was happy I caught it before ordering.