The world’s best baker 2021 comes from Sevilla

The world’s best baker 2021 comes from Sevilla

On October 26, the World Baker 2021 competition was held in Munich, Germany. This is staged by the International Union of Bakery and Pastry (UIB), to find the best baker in the world. This year’s first prize went to Domi Velez, a 43-year-old from the Sevillian city of Lebrija.

Domi is the owner of the El Horno de Velez bakery, and carries a passion for this food in his veins. He comes from a family with a long tradition of baking, and now he has made his home city in province of Sevilla famous in the world of bread.

When looking on the website of El Horno de Velez, you will discover a lot of talk about cultivated sourdough, which any good baker will tell you is important. One person who knows exactly how important sourdough is in the bakery world is Domi Velez. He goes to great lengths to explain how much chemistry and bakery have to do if we want to understand the process of creating sourdough.

The world’s best baker talks about enzymes and how they play their game when creating bread, although he summarises it in a much simpler way. “The cultured sourdough is a compound of bacteria and yeasts that have fermented spontaneously”. For everything else he says, why not look on his website.

Catalonia’s Enric Badia came second in the Bread World Cup.

One week before Domi won in Munich, a young baker from Catalonia, Enric Badia, was in Nantes competing in the Mondial du Pain. At only 25 years of age, Enric achieved second place in this Bread World Cup. He is the the last generation of Forn Elias.

For a professional in his line of work, this is a great honour, as he said about his baking skills,  “It has been the host, because it has always been what I liked to do. It’s my job and it’s my hobby and suddenly being told that you’re the second-best in the world is amazing”.

Also extolling the wonders of sourdough, Erich said, “In many materials and in the environment, there are many spores, and if you give this good food and a good environment to live in, it will reproduce. With sourdough, what we do is feed these yeasts, keep them alive and in good condition”.

Badia is clear though that sourdough is not synonymous with success, “Sourdough does not mean good bread, in fact you can make shit out of sourdough bread, which is what the industry has taken advantage of a bit”, as reported by 20minutos.es.

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Written by

Chris King

Originally from Wales, Chris spent years on the Costa del Sol before moving to the Algarve where he is a web reporter for The Euro Weekly News covering international and Spanish national news. Got a news story you want to share? Then get in touch at editorial@euroweeklynews.com

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