A hundred years on Carrer de l'Olivera

Three generations

Conrad has been kneading dough here since he was sixteen, and has run the bakery for 46 years: he is the third generation. As a young man he worked nights side by side with his father, with industrial methods, a small oven and flour he couldn't trace.

"Shape up or shut down"

When industrial part-baked bread arrived, it changed everything, and Conrad was clear: "O t'espaviles o tanques" — shape up or shut down. He chose to relearn bread-making the artisan way. "It has given me a lot of satisfaction, and I've got where I wanted to be," he says.

"I haven't invented anything," he insists. He learned from masters, above all his French friend Jérôme Foulquier, who taught him the techniques, and he admires the French baker Raymond Calvel. From his trips to France he brought back the recipe for the cavallers, a tourte de meule of stone-ground flour and plenty of liquid sourdough, which Barcelona Singular called "l'obra mestra del Conrad Serra", his masterpiece.

A meeting place

Puri is behind the counter. "We try to give the best service," Conrad says, because it matters to the neighbourhood: "It's a place that holds people together."

In 2015 the bakery was one of the 28 on Barcelona's Ruta del Bon Pa, its good-bread route.

The next hundred

The next baker already has a name. Yoster, who has worked in the bakehouse for twenty years, will carry it on when Conrad retires. "Even though he isn't family, he'll carry on and we'll keep making bread," Conrad says. "In fact, it's as if he were family."

«Know-how is for sharing, not for keeping to yourself.»