Fresh Flavor, artisan bread via WhatsApp in Bogotá

Breads and doughs

Nor should the reader think that the adventure of finding bread and pastries is all that dramatic. One of the best things about life in the neighborhoods is being able to walk to the nearest bakery. They exist. And many of them. Quality and variety are another matter entirely. For more than a decade, both fellow chefs and friends with a sweet tooth have been teaching me to spot small details to ensure an optimal purchase and avoid instant heartburn. Basically, it's about avoiding places that reek of excessive margarine and hydrogenated fats, as well as attractively yellow products resulting from the use of industrial dyes.

Once you get past those details, you're captivated by the array of Colombian breads and pastries. For example, I have a little book in my library called 'Five Thousand Pieces of Bread,' published by the now-defunct Tyrannus Melancholicus, which illustrates 40 different types of bread. And then there are the pastries, fried foods, arepas, and sweets. Crespas, panochas, polvorosas, empanadas, cookies, cucas, liberales, borrachos, marquesas, carisecas, cotudos, alfandoques, tortas, mantecadas, turrones, meringues, veleños, marquetas, tamarindos, cocadas, brevas, herpos, melcochas, tumes, and other delights are just some of the options you can enjoy at any time of day. In Colombia, we call them mecatos.

The first time I heard about El Sabor Fresco was thanks to Carlos Cárdenas, a good friend and an excellent Colombian pastry chef trained, among other places, at Espai Sucre in my beloved Barcelona. "Do you want to try one of the best puff pastries in Bogotá?" he asked. My answer, as with everything he suggests that's actually delicious, was a resounding "Yes, I do!" The unique thing, Carlos warned me, is that orders are placed via WhatsApp and delivered to your door. So, phone in hand and using WhatsApp, I placed my first order on February 28, 2022, and had the good fortune to meet Luisa Santofimio and Johnathan Ramírez, both very young, a couple, originally from Bogotá, and the creators of El Sabor Fresco.

Ibán Yarza and his grandmother

Johnathan Ramírez combined his studies at the Mariano Moreno School of Gastronomy in Bogotá with graffiti art and a job as a bakery assistant, cleaning baking trays and sweeping. Later, he learned to make puff pastry, “with Mrs. Marly, who was quite strict. The old-fashioned way, by hand, with force on the rolling pin and without an industrial dough sheeter,” he recalls. After that, he dabbled in various disciplines, including bread making, pastry making, and confectionery. “I read and watched videos, trying to learn from everywhere, but I really started making bread and stayed in the bakery business thanks to the YouTube channel of the Spaniard Ibán Yarza,” he confesses. “Ibán transported his own electric oven from home on a shopping cart frame to teach courses wherever he was invited,” he explains.

Luisa, for her part, studied illustration and photography, but she grew up surrounded by cooking thanks to the stoves and culinary knowledge of her grandmothers, who were from Barrancabermeja and Boyacá. Thanks to this family knowledge, she was able to support Johnathan in the culinary adventures that followed in the years to come. “We had a food cart with a kettle and a griddle, and we would go out on the street selling hot dogs and hamburgers with good bread. We were out from five in the afternoon until nine at night,” they recall, laughing.

After their street adventures, Gladys, Ramírez's grandmother who had been a baker for several years, took them to her old family home to give them what is still El Sabor Fresco's greatest treasure: her old two-drawer oven. From there, to this day, come the pastries and croissants of this bakery couple. “My grandparents have always been incredibly supportive. My grandmother lent me the money to buy my first mixer, she acted as my guarantor, and she gave us a room to start working,” he recalls with emotion.

At home, they started baking, experimenting with recipes, burning loaves of bread, making mistakes, and refining their formulas. Cupcakes, brownies, cream puffs, and Halloween and Christmas cookies appeared, which they sold on busy streets near shopping centers for a few hours each day. “We even printed business cards with what we made. Call and order, call and order. At home, it was all about working and living together. The whole project grew very organically and practically,” Luisa recounts. But there came a point when venturing out onto the streets no longer made sense or was profitable. Johnathan took over the bakery, and Luisa organized a schedule of regular fairs to attend so they could continue selling their products.

After many fairs and a few more adventures in Bogotá, including the pandemic and its aftermath, they persevered and grew until 2022, when they moved to an apartment in the Teusaquillo neighborhood where El Sabor Fresco became a professional business. The variety of sourdough breads began to arrive, along with work with flours from ancient grains, breadsticks, brioches, butter croissants, and the glorious puff pastry. Production multiplied, and they even had a minor fire when they fell asleep while baking ciabatta loaves. They participated in a neighborhood restaurant project with hundreds of pizzas, selected to attend a few key fairs, began direct contact with farmers and mills of ancient wheat, and word of mouth led to requests for home delivery. “The first delivery was just two loaves of bread, which I personally delivered on my bike. I felt so happy. Then, even my dad got involved in the growth of the deliveries. He used his motorcycle for the distant orders and I used my bicycle for the ones that were close by,” Johnathan recalls with a light-up face.

If the mountain won't come to Muhammad

As the business grew, they decided it was time to separate their family life from their professional life. Luisa set about finding a production space in the neighborhood. She found one much sooner and much closer than expected, behind the Ecopetrol building on Carrera 8 with Calle 38. The space is closed to the public; you can only stop by on Wednesdays and Saturdays from 9 a.m. to 2 p.m. to see if there's anything left. In fact, I don't recommend going after noon because everything sells out quickly. And it's no wonder.

So, where can those of us who live far from the Teusaquillo neighborhood get El Sabor Fresco bread? You can find Johnathan and Luisa at the Agroecological Market, where they've been for three years now. It's organized by Slow Food Bogotá every Sunday at Casa Lolita, a corner house on Calle 70 and Octava, in the Quinta Camacho neighborhood. And if getting around Bogotá on those days and at those times is still inconvenient, I suggest using WhatsApp to place your order in advance for convenient home delivery.

Every Monday they send a document via WhatsApp listing their classic products and new weekly offerings. It also includes information about their activities, the producers and projects they work with, as well as tips for enjoying their breads. You place your order, they confirm the price, and you receive it at home on Wednesdays and Saturdays.

I see that this week there are butter croissants, passion fruit and almond croissants, country-style shortbread with organic corn flour from Boyacá, pizza bases, ciabattas, butter brioche, cinnamon babka, wholemeal sandwich bread with seeds, wholemeal rolls with nuts, five-seed bread, barley and whole wheat porridge, rustic wheat and barley bread, and its brother filled with walnuts, crackers with seeds and olive oil, the addictive fine herb grissinis, granola and, of course, my fetish product: the puff pastry heart, classic or with chocolate and cocoa nibs.

Johnathan and Luisa are also connoisseurs of the oldest and most emblematic bakeries in downtown Bogotá. So this interview ended with a wedding cake from Belalcázar Bakery, established in 1942, and a cheesecake from Doña Pachita, established in 1950. It's wonderful to see how this young couple honors and evolves old Colombian baking traditions; and the work they do with farmers at the nearly extinct watermills in the Department of Boyacá, where ancient grains are ground by stone, is admirable. These silent, disappearing witnesses to Colombia's most golden and productive era of centuries past are truly remarkable. But that story deserves its own article.