The battle of the bakers

Our apartment is almost exactly halfway between the two competing bakeries in our little section of Üsküdar. Over the years, I have built up a friendly relationship with the bakery owners and workers. We easily inquire after each other’s families and talk about how work is going for all of us. When we pass on the street, we wave and call out greetings to each other.

It took awhile for me to understand the level of competiveness between these two little businesses. In the past, I generally purchased bread from whichever bakery I happened to be walking past, oblivious to the fact that to the bakers were keeping track of my bread consumption. It seems to me that both bakeries have basically the same selection of breads, cookies, börek and desserts, so there really is not much difference between them, in my opinion. One bakery is at the bottom of our hill and is situated just about halfway between the outdoor market and our home. The second bakery is a little bit further up our hill, but in between our apartment and our son’s school. My choice of which baker to buy from was largely based on which one was more convenient for me. If I was on my way home from the Üsküdar ferry, the bakery at the bottom of the hill was the easiest to pop into for a loaf for dinner and breakfast. If I needed bread while on my way home from my son’s school, I simply stopped in at the one up the hill from our house.

I did not realize that my lack of loyalty to a particular bakery was noticed, or even a problem, until one day, a few months ago, I entered the small establishment at the bottom of the hill. “Abla, where have you been? Why have you not been in to buy bread from us for two weeks?” the flour-covered owner cried out as I stepped through the door. I had been working from home and had not had any reason to go to the dock for a boat across the Bosporus, so I had not made a trip past his bakery, or bought bread there, but instead, had been buying from the one up the hill when I took my son to school. “We have missed your business,” the owner continued, shaking his head, “And, I have to tell you, that bakery up the hill you have been getting your bread from, well, they just do not have the same high quality that we do.” Apologizing for not having stopped in earlier, I bought an extra loaf out of guilt. Much to my amusement, I hear similar refrains from the second bakery if I fail to stop in every few days for a fresh loaf or two.

All this brings me to my recent dilemma and my avoiding both bakers. A friend gave me a book on baking bread as a gift for the new year. Since then, I have become enamored with my new hobby of making fresh, homemade breads for my family and friends. As I mix each batch of bread, I think of all the different types of flours I can add, as well as extra ingredients for a wider variety of specialty breads that I can create. The result of this is that I have not bought bread from either baker in a couple of months. We have been feasting on loaves filled with a mix of domestic and imported cheeses, olives and herbs. While my neighborhood bakeries have a variety of breads to choose from, I have discovered that there is nothing like creating my own personal loaves of bread and having the chance to eat them warm from the oven, something that was hard, or impossible, to do when buying bread from the bakeries.