The Bread Guardians: Lutz Geißler and Christina Weiß

A detached house in northern Hamburg, a brick building in a quiet neighborhood with a carport out front. On the roof, a gleaming silver chimney towers many meters above those of the neighbors. "We had to meet certain requirements, including the fact that the exhaust air from the bakery can only leave the house at a specific height," says Lutz Geißler, who, together with his partner Christina Weiß, opened the Brotkumpels bakery in the Sasel district – right in the heart of a Hamburg residential area. Anyone wanting to bake their own bread will inevitably come across this native of Saxony, whose blog and bread-baking books help hobby bakers in Germany, Austria, and Switzerland achieve success at their own ovens. Although the idea of a bakery had been brewing in his mind since 2013, it took almost ten years to bring it to fruition.

Geissler and Weiss: A dream team

His book, number one on bread baking, landed on the "Spiegel" bestseller list. Lutz Geißler doesn't make a big deal of his success. The 38-year-old is friendly and reserved; he knows his strengths. When he explains in his courses how to bake bread at home that can easily compete with that of the local bakery, he exudes the aura of a scientist. It was in one of these courses that he met Christina Weiß. She shares his passion for bread and went even further than Lutz Geißler. Alongside her regular job, the business administration graduate completed an apprenticeship as a baker in her mid-40s and then earned her master baker's certificate. "Without her, we wouldn't even be allowed to open the bakery; in Germany, a master baker is mandatory," says Geißler.

Lutz Geissler's living room is being transformed into a bakery.

In 2017, he moved to Hamburg to Christina Weiß's house, where professional baking has been taking place since February of this year. "It was important to us to be a genuine local supplier in the neighborhood." Imagine the faces at the building authority when the request arrived to convert a living room into a bakery. Fire safety? Emergency exits? And why in a residential area at all? Those were the easier questions to answer. One of the biggest concerns was whether the smells would bother the neighbors. "We went from door to door, collected signatures, and kept hearing the same question: When are you finally going to open?" says Geißler, still shaking his head in disbelief.