{"id":6129,"date":"2019-09-17T10:00:00","date_gmt":"2019-09-17T08:00:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/yun-berlin.com\/journal\/?p=6129"},"modified":"2019-11-14T18:32:06","modified_gmt":"2019-11-14T17:32:06","slug":"aera","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/yun-berlin.com\/journal\/aera\/","title":{"rendered":"A NEW ERA FOR BREAD"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><iframe loading=\"lazy\" title=\"YUN JOURNAL | interviews AERA bread\" width=\"640\" height=\"360\" src=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/embed\/ou2T4nThdgY?feature=oembed\" frameborder=\"0\" allow=\"accelerometer; autoplay; clipboard-write; encrypted-media; gyroscope; picture-in-picture; web-share\" referrerpolicy=\"strict-origin-when-cross-origin\" allowfullscreen><\/iframe><\/p>\n<h4>In conversation with Ava, founder of gluten-free bakery,<a href=\"https:\/\/aerabread.com\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\"> AERA.<\/a><\/h4>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Growing up in a country whose inhabitants have a life-long love affair with bread, for actress-come-baker, Ava Celik, her diagnosis was doubly difficult. Born and raised in Berlin, Ava enjoyed Brot in all its glorious forms until in 2014 she was diagnosed with celiac disease.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">\u201cI was no longer allowed to eat the food I love, cakes, cookies, pasta and of course, bread.\u201d She tells me how the gluten-free bread that lined the supermarket shelves, with its loud, yellow packaging, served as a constant reminder that normal bread was off limits.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">\u201cIt looked like bread for sick people! At dinner parties, I would take my special bread from my bag and people would say..\u2019Oh, poor Ava. Sorry you can\u2019t have any of this nice bread we\u2019re all having.\u2019\u201d So, in a bid to \u201cflip the script\u201d, she started baking, at first out of necessity, until making the perfect gluten-free loaf was all she could think about.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n<h6><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">\u201cIt took a long time to get the recipe right. I would wake up thinking about bread and go to bed thinking about bread, and so I thought, this is what I need to do.\u201d\u00a0<\/span><\/h6>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Today, the artisan loaves that are pulled from the oven at the AERA bakery are enough to make even the most experienced of bakers envious; flawless, thick-crusted perfection. Watching Ava knead methodically, working and shaping the dough, it\u2019s clear to see she\u2019s found solace in baking- which is somewhat ironic given that a few years ago baked goods had caused her so much discomfort. But, like all good things, it took time- two years in fact. <\/span><\/p>\n<h6><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Ava tells me, \u201cit took two years to perfect the recipe and I was sharing my progress online along the way. I had some money saved from acting, so I could spend my days baking.\u201d<\/span><\/h6>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">\u00a0Though gluten-free baking isn\u2019t anything new, (plenty of grains like millet and oats have been used in place of wheat for many years), Ava took on the famously difficult task of baking wheat-less sourdough. \u201cOf course, I didn\u2019t think it would take this long,\u201d she continued, \u201cbut I studied the flours, which took some months, then I needed to learn about milling, the grains, where they come from, how they react to each other\u2026 <\/span><\/p>\n<h6><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">&#8230;it became important to me to question everything.\u201d\u00a0<\/span><\/h6>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Despite complex recipe research and plenty of trial and error, the end goal was blissfully simple: create something as close to conventional sourdough as possible. \u201cWe don\u2019t try and sell bread for sick people, we just try to make a product that\u2019s good because it\u2019s good, and not because it\u2019s gluten-free.\u201d The steady stream of customers who want to buy bread, despite the bakery being officially closed that day, is testament to just how good it truly is.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Ava puts much of the success of AERA bread down to simplicity; focusing on perfecting one thing at a time and the same philosophy can be seen in AERA\u2019s visual identity. The bakery, coffee shop hybrid is minimal and sleek, lit with warm strips of light and dotted with cheese plants. Unlike traditional bakeries, where bundles of bread are stacked behind the counter, the products at AERA sit in a uniform row behind glass- in Ava\u2019s words, \u201cyou know what you\u2019re getting\u201d. She acknowledges that the bakery wasn\u2019t always so beautiful, \u201cin the beginning, it was very ugly, it was just white walls because it was a garage. We built the space together with <a href=\"https:\/\/www.modistestudio.com\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">Modiste Studios,<\/a> who also designed <a href=\"https:\/\/bonanzacoffee.de\/wordpress\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">Bonanza Coffee<\/a> in Kreuzberg. We basically just wanted to make the space as useful as possible.\u201d\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n<h6><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">The AERA philosophy then, is one rooted in simplicity, after all what greater, simple pleasure exists in life than a loaf of crusty bread? <\/span><\/h6>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Ava\u2019s commitment to studying, proving and baking wasn\u2019t to create something extraordinary or unusual- quite the opposite. AERA is a quiet rebellion in the face of mediocre, plastic-wrapped alternatives and it was \u2018mission accomplished\u2019 when at a party, friends wanted to tuck in to <\/span><i><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">her<\/span><\/i><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\"> bread, instead of their own.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">And, if you\u2019re wondering what\u2019s next for AERA, I can tell you in three wonderful words: gluten-free croissants.<\/span><\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">You can find AERA bread at:<\/span><\/p>\n<p><i><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\"><a href=\"https:\/\/www.rocketandbasil.com\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">Rocket and Basil,<\/a> <a href=\"https:\/\/daluma.de\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">Daluma,<\/a> <a href=\"https:\/\/www.sohohouseberlin.com\/en\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">SoHo house,<\/a> <a href=\"https:\/\/fathercarpenter.com\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">Father Carpenter<\/a> and <a href=\"http:\/\/www.commongrnd.de\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">Commonground<\/a><\/span><\/i><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">.<\/span><\/p>\n<div class=\"BottomCredits\">\n<ul>\n<li><a href=\"https:\/\/aerabread.com\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">AERA<\/a><\/li>\n<li>Fasanenstra\u00dfe 74<\/li>\n<li>10719 Berlin<\/li>\n<li>&#8211;<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>In conversation with Ava, founder of gluten-free bakery, AERA. &nbsp; Growing up in a country whose inhabitants have a life-long love affair with bread, for actress-come-baker, Ava Celik, her diagnosis was doubly difficult. Born and raised in Berlin, Ava enjoyed Brot in all its glorious forms until in 2014 she was diagnosed with celiac disease.\u00a0 [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":9,"featured_media":6191,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"video","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[97,103,104],"tags":[32,12],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/yun-berlin.com\/journal\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6129"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/yun-berlin.com\/journal\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/yun-berlin.com\/journal\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/yun-berlin.com\/journal\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/9"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/yun-berlin.com\/journal\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=6129"}],"version-history":[{"count":20,"href":"https:\/\/yun-berlin.com\/journal\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6129\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":6719,"href":"https:\/\/yun-berlin.com\/journal\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6129\/revisions\/6719"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/yun-berlin.com\/journal\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/6191"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/yun-berlin.com\/journal\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=6129"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/yun-berlin.com\/journal\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=6129"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/yun-berlin.com\/journal\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=6129"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}