Esther Mulder runs a small bakery in Oude Westen. She starts work at half past one in the morning and sells her last loaf at around noon. We spoke at the long wooden table in the back of the shop, dusted with flour, while a batch of rye bread proved under linen cloths.
The hours
Mei Tanaka: When did you last see a sunrise?
Esther Mulder: From outside? Nine years ago, I think, on holiday. From in here I see it every day through that little window above the ovens. It goes from black to blue to a kind of grey-pink, and by then the first customers are already knocking. I know the city by its smell at four in the morning. Wet pavement, diesel, and my bread.
MT: How much do you bake in a night?
EM: About four hundred loaves, plus the pastries. That is a lot of dough to move by hand. My shoulders know about it.
Why nights
MT: Could you bake in the day instead?
EM: People want bread in the morning. That is the whole business. But I also like the night. Nobody phones. Nobody emails. The radio is on, the ovens tick, the dough does what it does. It is the only time in my life that nobody needs anything from me except the bread.
MT: Is it lonely?
EM: Not really. There is a street cleaner who waves every morning at three. The man from the newspaper van leaves one on the step for me. The night bus driver sometimes stops for a coffee. It is a small club. We all know each other’s faces and none of each other’s names.
The rye
MT: What is the bread you are proudest of?
EM: The rye. It takes two days and it is not pretty, and half my customers do not buy it. But the ones who do, buy it every week for years. That is the best kind of customer: the one who comes back for the ugly bread.
“I know the city by its smell at four in the morning.”
