Our story
Our story
THE FOUR MAINSTAYS OF ORGANIC BAKERY DE TROG
Day in day out, our enthusiastic team of expert master bakers managed by Hendrik Durnez bakes your delicious traditional bread. As a boy, Hendrik dreamed of baking bread like his grandfather used to do; using the purest raw materials, all organic, with no additives or artificial flavourings, and with respect for the pure and traditional baking craft - plus a healthy dose of passion and inspiration, of course.
Organic Raw Materials
Our planet provides us with the purest and most nutritious ingredients. So it would make no sense if we tried to change them. At Organic Bakery de Trog, we therefore see it as our duty to select only the best organic raw materials and use them in their most original and authentic form to create delicious bread.
Hendrik, our passionate master baker, is a real expert at his job. He carefully selects the organic raw materials and then uses them in our unique, traditional production process. Among other things, we bake our bread almost exclusively with stone-ground flour. That means that the entire wheat grain, including the wheat germ and vitamin E, is ground on slowly rotating millstones, preventing overheating. This ensures that our bread is a natural source of carbohydrates, proteins, vitamins, minerals, spore elements and essential fatty acids. In short, everything we need for a healthy diet!
Click here to find out more about all things organic!
The Time Factor
Our only enhancer… is time.
In our bakeries, we have deep respect for the resting and rising times required by the dough and the accompanying natural fermentation process. Some bread types require a process lasting more than 24 hours! Besides ensuring that the bread has a longer shelf life, this also gives all the aromas plenty of time to develop, resulting in deliciously tasting, time-honoured bread.
❝ Ssssssssshhhhhhhhhhh..... our bread is resting!
Homemade Natural Sourdough
Meet Henri
Henri Sourdough was born when the bakery was founded. He came into being as a small ball of spontaneously fermented dough and developed into our one and only homemade natural sourdough! He is now around 40 years old and is the common thread running through our production process. His recipe is still the basis for all of our sourdough bread, and his aroma gets stronger every year! At Organic Bakery De Trog, we never use inactive sourdough powder or standardised industrial starters... just pure craftsmanship!
Who am I?
Sourdough is a culture grown in a culture medium – the mother dough – that ferments and develops lactobacilli spontaneously with the right combination moisture, flour and temperature. the older the mother dough, the more aromas are released and the tastier the bread.
The use of a culture dough means that our products have a number of unique characteristics:
- our homemade sourdough determines the character and authenticity of our products
- sourdough is a natural enhancer that creates flavour, aroma, structure and sustained freshness; it means that all of our bread is free of chemical enhancers
- the use of sourdough means that mineral nutrients such as calcium, magnesium and iron can be assimilated more easily
- thanks to the long turnaround times, our bread is a wonderful slow-food product.
❝ We provide quality, originality, exclusivity, authenticity, social engagement and, above all, products that are made with passion by enthusiastic people!- HENDRIK DURNEZ - MASTER BAKER, BIO BAKKERIJ DE TROG
Craftsmanship
What makes the traditional character of our bread so unique is the combination of the three mainstays mentioned above. Added to that, we continue to use a unique, slow kneading method and our creations also require a great deal of manual work through the peocess. Manual work is vitally important for our products because it defines their character and distinguishing features.
It all starts with the weighing process. At this stage, we don't mix all the ingredients together but add them gradually to the dough at exactly the right time, depending on their function. We shape the vast majority of our bread types by hand, not just because it's something we like doing but also because the high degree of hydration of some of the doughs means that they cannot be kneaded mechanically.
The process of applying the decoration and scoring the bread is also pure manual work. In addition, the bread is placed in the oven by hand and, lastly, it is packaged by hand.
The high degree of manual work is a determining factor for our product, because it means we can offer our customers quality, originality, exclusivity, authenticity, social engagement and above all products that were made with passion by enthusiastic people.
The only thing we can't guarantee is ..... uniformity!
History
Wholemeal Bakery De Trog was founded in the late 1970s. The plan was to bake honest and high-quality bread varieties. The location? A baker's shop in the picturesque historic city centre of Bruges.
The number of loyal “De Trog bread lovers” grew rapidly in the years that followed, mainly thanks to excellent word-of-mouth advertising.
So it was no wonder that the first bakery rapidly became too small. But the move to a modern and brand-new bakery in Ypres in 2005 soon solved that problem. However, this bakery too began to burst at the seams and in 2007 the site in Ypres doubled its surface area. The bakery is currently expanding again...
And it is here that we bake the deliciously pure and genuine Bio De Trog bread for all our bread lovers seven days a week!