Snow White Edita Bacianskienė: "Whatever the equipment is, you can't bake bread without love"

Snieguolė, you work as a product development manager for Lithuania and Latvia. And how did your path at Vilniaus Duona begin?

The path began like many people of my generation: an institute, two years by appointment, and then unwittingly became the basis of life.

I finished my studies in Kaunas, and as a Vilnius resident myself, I returned to Vilnius and stayed here. And I've been working here for many years. This is my first workplace, but employment contracts, owners, contracts, positions were changing all the time, it was an interesting period.

I started as a technologist, shift technologist, I had to stay in both the position of director and the position of an international manager. There are opportunities to make a career. The company is international.

How many professions do you need to bake bread?

Really a lot. One person will not do anything in this place, because it is really a long process, wheat bread is shorter, rye bread is longer, and hands are needed everywhere. The food industry is a unique branch where in all processes – from the production of the raw material itself to the delivery of that product to the consumer – work does not happen by itself, hands are needed.

Therefore, professions are all necessary and we are looking forward to mixing dough, baking, loading bread, preparing it for transportation. For people who want to associate themselves with this field and see themselves as a producer, this is a very good medium. I say that the best general is the one who started from the lowest stage. He knows everything in life.

And then with experience comes to higher positions.

And what is your own bread?

Bread is probably one of those values that is still left in us. Bread is the basis that has not separated any family – it is the connecting link. Even the tradition of creating a family to break it by meeting them at home has survived.

We all probably have those people who live abroad, and if you ask what to bring gifts, everyone says: bread! Because there is no such bread in Europe as we have.

When you were in our bakery, did you smell the smell of bread? The smell of rye bread is, as young people would say, carrying. You can be very full, but you can't resist that smell. And you don't get tired of it.

What is your favorite bread?

I'm a rye bread eater. I respect all the wishes of my customers and my job is like this, but I don't like sweet breads myself. I like bread with a minimum of raw materials, a lot of grain. To be precise, Rugelis is the most delicious bread for me.

If I remember correctly, we started baking back in the 60s. This is really a recipe with very old traditions.

How many types of bread do you bake now?

When I started working in '86, we all know there were revolutions and everything else, it was just necessary to satisfy the need for bread. And in general, produced. There was "Palanga" the main type of bread and "Vilnius" bread was baked in huge quantities.

After Independence, people began to travel abroad, see other cultures and keep up with it.

When Finnish investors came, they looked very delicately at our old products, "Palanga" and "Bočiai" bread. He understood their value. We started to introduce more parallel "Toste", toasted breads.

Now we have many types of bread, more than 100 products for every taste: from 100 percent rye bread to 100 percent wheat. I don't even know if so much is needed. It is already too difficult for the user to choose.

How do you feel that Vilniaus Duona is part of an international company?

We have a very great opportunity to improve ourselves, through international seminars, symposiums, trainings. After all, we also try to present one or another product to the consumer with fashion. Just as there are car fashions and clothing fashions, bread has its own trends and fashions.

For example, protein breads are very popular now, products without added sugar, without wheat, without gluten, many ideas come from an international company.

Lantmannen Unibake pays a lot of attention to the promotion of oats as a grain that is beneficial for health. Because it is the number one raw material. For those who cannot consume wheat, gluten, bread with oats is the first product.

We, Lithuania, are a land of rye, because geographically they fit very well here. But today we grow a lot of oats. Internationality gives us more knowledge about bread than we had yesterday. Rye has also not yet been studied in detail as a raw material and how much benefit it can bring to humans.

You are like a bread sommelier. What should be valued for bread?

First of all, these people must have undergone training, to check how much they are able to distinguish one or another taste or smell. Because one distinguishes more between sweet flavors, the other bitter.

It may surprise you, but the same bread, it can contain up to 21 aromas. Like mature wine, ripe bread: the longer the process, the fuller it has a range of flavors and aromas. And because of this, the bread is not boring.

The main difference between our Lithuanians and those European breads is that the bread in our country must be very tasty. It must have taste.

For example, baguette or ciabatta, those breads are more neutral, the flavor is given by what it is eaten with, and our bread itself is rich in flavor.

In order to be called that full-fledged evaluator, you have those smells, tastes to renew and check every week, and it is necessary to remember how it smells, what it tastes like. Not always a person who comes from the country can say as much about the nuances of bread flavors as professionals.

We taste wine, so we can taste bread as well. And according to what to choose it?

First of all, a person must know what he wants: if he wants rye bread or wheat bread, then the first ingredient in the line of ingredients must be the one he is looking for. If you are looking for rye bread, rye flour must be the first. If you are looking for whole wheat, it must be named with the first number. (A detailed article on how to choose bread with Snow White is here.)

What about sugar?

I would recommend that that sugar be up to 5 g/100 grams. This is the limit that is recommended, according to all the nutritional pyramids and the green key symbol.

The amount of salt is also relevant. The amount of salt affects health, blood pressure, so it should be no more than 1.2-1.3 g per hundred grams. Although we are not the leaders, we do not add a lot of salt, some regions have significantly more salt in their bread.

How much fiber should there be?

Fiber it is a gastric broom. 6 g/100 grams is recommended. Let's say "Rugelis", which I mentioned, is the leader in our portfolio in terms of fiber, it has 11 g of it. That's really a lot. Who has a little problems with peristalsis, with digestion, is perfect.

One hundred grams of rye bread, e.g. "Grandma's" bread has as much fiber as 5 servings of tomatoes.

Two slices of wholemeal rye bread provide practically the entire required daily intake of fiber (about 25 g).

What does it mean to work in a bakery?

You have to be a very collective person, because it is a collective work. It doesn't matter if you work as a marketing specialist or a production manager. This is the contribution of all of us. It is important to like collectivity. To listen to others and to be able to quickly find one or another way out of situations. After all, our product has a short shelf life, only 5-7 days.

Bread is eaten by almost everyone and everyone is some kind of expert on it. You must always feel the opinion of the consumer: to manage time, people, resources, and the situation in the market.

By the way, when the situation becomes more complicated, such as covid, geopolitical unrest, we produce an enormous amount of bread. For people, it is like a symbol of security to have bread at home.

So can you say bread baking is one of the fundamental professions?

It is not for nothing that no one has always shot or killed bread makers. Because it was the people who provided the food.

Such an almost sacred profession?

Well, it might be too bold to say sacred, but you need a lot of love for bread. And whatever those equipment and technologies are, you can't create bread without love.

And bread itself as a living organism?

You say well, sometimes it is not very convenient for us and not very convenient for producers: a new harvest, flour changes and the harvest tries to control you, not you. And we have to get a consistent taste of the pastry.

What would you say to young people why it is worth working at Vilniaus Duona?

If young people want a lot of action, then it will definitely never be boring here. Can I work remotely? You can't work remotely here, because there is a lot of direct work.

If you want activities, you want to be on the wave, you want to express yourself in product development, innovations, techniques or anything else, yes, this is the place. This is hard but meaningful work. 

I would very much like that bread, as it was the basis of our family, would remain the same. It's all up to us.

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