Anna Makievska’s The Bakehouse was one of the first to spearhead sourdough in Ukraine. Here, she shares the importance of kneading and baking – and the recipe for her signature loaf
Bread baking has always been an act of creation for me. And I hadn’t considered myself a creator before I baked my first sourdough bread. The bakery I co-founded and named The Bakehouse is an artisan bakery in Kyiv, Ukraine. We have baked sourdough bread and made delicious pastries since 2015. We were pioneers of sourdough long-fermented bread in Ukraine, and in October 2021 we finally opened our very new bakery – Bakehouse Garage – in the Podil district of Kyiv. This is the bakery of my dreams, and we spent three years and US$1.5m building it. But during the first days of the war, we had attacks and explosions just a few kilometres away, so we had to close it on 24 February. Instead we baked in the basement of the old bakery.
From day three of the war, my team has baked bread and given it for free to our soldiers, hospitals, people in cities and villages hurt by the Russians, and the elderly of Kyiv. Our bakers make 450 to 1,000 charity loaves every day. And we will continue to bake them as long as our country needs them.
