Life lessons I learned from ‘pugon’ baking

The smell of good bread baking, like the sound of lightly flowing water, is indescribable in its evocation of innocence and delight.  —MFK Fisher

Like Justin Timberlake, Taylor Swift and Megastar Sharon Cuneta Pangilinan, in recent months I’ve tried my hand at and come to love baking.

No, this isn’t my new profession; it’s a business I took over as part of a real estate purchase. In December 2013, I bought what is reputedly Metro Manila’s oldest artisanal bakery, which still uses a pugon, or wood-fired brick oven. The 75-year-old Kamuning Bakery is noted for its pan de suelo, pan de sal, blueberry cheesecake and many traditional pastries, as well as many celebrity patrons since 1939.  The shapes, the crust, the crumb, the taste and aroma of its genuine artisan breads are different.     

I observed and came to admire the artisan bakers — so much so that I tried to study and attempted to join them occasionally, not just for fun but also to gain a basic understanding of what they’re doing. I’m not a good baker yet, but I learned many fascinating life lessons from the kitchen of this antique bakery:

1. Be humble. In the bakery’s kitchen, it is a truly democratic, classless and humbling place. The no-diploma senior provinciano guy, who after many years has become a great master baker, is so much more skilled than the rich kid I hired fresh from a half-million-peso-per-semester culinary school as among my new additions to our team of bakers. The other veteran bakers have no fancy culinary school diplomas; they’ve become top artisan bakers due to years of apprenticeship. Two other veterans have physical disabilities: one has a hearing problem and another lost a leg as a child, but they’ve over-compensated with their exceptional talents and quiet demeanor. All my good veteran bakers are humble to each other.

2. Love your work. Have passion. It’s not all about money. The artisan bakers at Kamuning Bakery truly love their work and are proud of their craft. Some of them do not even take days off. I had to explain to them that even God took a rest on the seventh day after six days of work!

3. Have discipline. Since the traditional pugon style of baking at Kamuning Bakery is time-consuming and tedious, bakers live like rural farmers by sleeping early every night and rising before sunrise. They wake up at 2 a.m. to meticulously create hearth breads for the 5 a.m. opening of the store. I’m awed by their discipline!

4. Do honest hard work. Bakers are down to earth. Unlike modern chain bakeries, supermarkets and multinationals with gas-fired ovens and machines, this pugon or oven baking by hand and fire is not for the faint of heart, but is very satisfying.  There is something very earthy, primitive and visceral about making bread the old way with no preservatives or additives. Using your hands to do leavening, kneading and baking — all these resonate to our very core, to our collective human heritage.

5. Have a plan or recipe. In baking or in life, we need a basic recipe or plan as a guide. Of course, the veteran artisan bakers have no need for recipes; I requested that every recipe and process be written down and standardized. Kamuning Bakery doesn’t only create breads and biscuits, it also bakes cakes — from brazo de Mercedes, egg pies and pianono to blueberry cheesecake and birthday cakes — where recipes are important.

6. Be creative. I learned that, as in many other endeavors, creativity is one of the qualities that sets a great baker apart from just a good baker. Baking is an art, too. Study the basics before tearing up recipes, then dare to be unique and artistic.

7. Cooperate. Unlike with modern gas ovens and baking machines, pugon baking needs teamwork and coordination between the guy carrying the long wooden peel into the heat and others whose hands mix flour, yeast and water but cannot do work near the fiery oven. There is no room for personality clashes, friction or egos in pugon baking.

8. Dare to make mistakes. Some people prefer to do nothing rather than risk making a mistake. In baking, especially pugon baking, trial and error happens and even the veterans also commit mistakes. No problem, just keep on doing the work again and again with your best effort.

9. Practice makes excellence. I do not believe in the saying “practice makes perfect,” because perfection isn’t a realistic goal. I’d rather go for excellence.

10. Say no to shortcuts. When learning baking, one shouldn’t be impatient and seek instant success in this modern era of instant messaging, instant coffee, instant everything. In particular, pugon-style baking really takes time, the kind of firewood and oven temperature should be right, quantities and quality should be precise, the timing needs to be exact, and techniques should be learned well.

11. Don’t just learn theories; act. It is fascinating to realize that buying books, Googling recipes, observing the veteran bakers and studying are nothing compared to actually using my hands to bake. Believe me, nothing I had observed or theoretically learned really clicked until I worked with my hands covered with flour. This applies also to entrepreneurship and other things in life — just do it.

12. Be happy. This might have no scientific basis yet, but I believe bakers who are happy can create more delicious breads, biscuits, pastries and cakes. Be positive; always be in a good humor.

13. Persevere. Baking requires patience, when a baker has to keep plodding every early morning till afternoon. If you encounter problems or fail, continue on, be steadfast, and persevere.

14. You are only as good as your last pan de sal. Whatever we do in life, we should strive to always be good and not be complacent. I don’t know how other bakery owners think, but I keep telling my hardworking manager and good bakers that we cannot rest on our laurels — the 75 years of good reputation chronicled in the books of the late food critic Dr. Doreen Fernandez. I tell them: “We are only as good as our last batch of pan de suelo, pan de sal or our last loaf.” What I mean is we need to always be consistent in quality and good taste. Every baking day is a new and exciting challenge to uphold excellence and consistency. 

15. Always learn something new. I keep encouraging even my talented bakers to still learn new ideas to improve on our popular traditional pastries and also to try innovate constantly. In life, we should always learn. Upholding 75 years of traditional wood-fired, brick-oven bread baking to uncompromising gourmet standards isn’t enough, we should also keep on studying, learning and innovating.

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Kamuning Bakery is located at 43 Judge Jimenez St. corner K-1 St., Kamuning, Quezon City, tel. nos. 929-2216, or 794-5045.

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