‘There’s no one that bakes bread like Sigrid’s bakery bakes it,’ says former governor basic and common buyer Adrienne Clarkson
New 12 months’s Eve will carry an finish to 2024, and it’ll additionally mark the top of a baking period in Barrie.
Sigrid’s Cafe and Fantastic Bakery is closing for good after a four-decade run.
The downtown Barrie store, owned and operated by the Higgins household, was born out of 4 generations of European educated bakers, and introduced a contact of Europe to central Ontario.
Initially based by Josef and Sigrid Krautgartner, the Ross Avenue bakery first opened its doorways in November 1983.
The couple left a profitable bakery in Germany to begin a brand new life in Canada with their kids, Andrea and Ines.
Their daughter, Andrea Higgins, took over in 2004.
“So, my husband’s turning 65 now. I have a few more years, but I guess I’ll join him,” she informed BarrieToday after asserting her retirement.
Giving up the bakery is “bittersweet.”
“I’ve been baking for 41 years, and loving it. I’ll miss a lot of my customers very much, but it’s also a new chapter,” she mentioned.
Higgins turned a grandmother final yr and is trying ahead to loads of household time.
She began her baker coaching in Germany on the age of 17.
Even earlier than that, Higgins discovered herself in her household’s bakery when she was simply 13.
“Before I went to school, I already had to start at the bakery sometimes before I went,” she mentioned.
Her kids, Tim, Patrick and Jessica, additionally labored within the Barrie enterprise, studying the bakery commerce.
She thanks her workers and her husband, Brian, for his or her love and assist over time.
For Higgins, assembly and coping with clients has all the time been a pleasure.
“I love creating and baking,” she added.
“You’re part of weddings, you’re part of birthday parties, and a lot of people say, ‘My parents brought me here when I was a little baby,’ and now, you know, they’re grown-ups with their own children. So, being part of their life and also the generations that grew up in between … is phenomenal.”
So far as the baking itself, she enjoys the hands-on work.
“Oh, I like a lot of things, but I think right now I actually like bread the most,” Higgins mentioned.
“There’s something really satisfying to work with dough, because we do everything from scratch. So, it’s really … an immense feeling to just pound it and to shape it and to get that ready.”
Working along with your fingers as a baker is one factor, however what concerning the tasting of your personal creations?
“Oh, I eat everything,” Higgins exclaimed.
High quality management is paramount on this enterprise.
“I eat about two sweet pieces a day. I can’t deny that,” Higgins admits. “ … Especially the ones with alcohol because you’ve always got to make sure the flavour is still there.”
Staying true to her baking roots was all the time necessary to her.
“We kept the same recipes, and we’re still baking just the way we always (have), the same ingredients, staying true to your butter and everything else,” Higgins confused.
Along with her retirement, a void is now left within the area’s baking world. So, who does she suggest to fill that void?
“I’m still looking, myself, because I know there’s a lot of nice bake shops,” Higgins mentioned.
“We get along with a lot of the other bakeries, and I have never had a chance to try them. So, I can’t really say which one is the best, but I’m sure there is somebody out there, and I hope somebody is out there that still bakes from scratch, but having always been here, I haven’t had the chance to really try it.”
Sigrid’s clients have all the time come from far and extensive to benefit from the fruits of Higgins’s labour.
“I know we had a lot of Europeans in the summertime, and a lot of people come from further away,” she mentioned.
Former governor basic Adrienne Clarkson has been a loyal buyer of Sigrid’s Cafe and Fantastic Bakery in Barrie since 1994. | Picture provided
One notable and longtime shopper, Adrienne Clarkson, governor basic of Canada from 1999 to 2005, spent a few of her dough on Higgins’s handiwork over time.
“She always used to come in for a long time, and still comes to this day,” Higgins mentioned.
“Oh, you don’t want to know her words,” she added with fun, describing Clarkson’s response to her retiring and shutting the enterprise. “She was truly upset.”
The previous governor basic, in a telephone name to BarrieToday, lamented the lack of her favorite bakery.
“We are very, very sorry that Sigrid’s is no longer going to be there. It was part of our tradition of going to the cottage on Georgian Bay,” Clarkson mentioned.
She has been a buyer since 1994.
Clarkson would typically go to Higgins in her bakery to choose up baked items on the way in which to the cottage and likewise on the way in which dwelling.
“There is nobody that bakes bread like Sigrid’s bakery bakes it,” she mentioned, “and I don’t expect to find anyone to replace her.”
As governor basic, Clarkson had a baker within the kitchen of Rideau Corridor in Ottawa.
Sigrid’s took of their baker, on the request of Clarkson, for per week’s coaching to study from Higgins and her husband the ins and outs of bread making.
“We bought the pans from Germany that they baked them in. They are cast-iron, I think. It makes a difference. It was wonderful and we never had bread as good as that,” she mentioned.
Clarkson mentioned the bakery was clearly a labour of affection.
“That’s what you were getting when you went there. You didn’t get just bread, because you can get perfectly adequate bread from machines, but you don’t get that kind of bread except if the people making it think of themselves as real bakers and (are) doing a product that’s different and better than anybody else can do it,” she mentioned.
“We’re really going to miss them.”
Again at Sigrid’s, one other longtime buyer lamented the group’s loss as she stocked up on baked items.
“I was looking forward to coming here for years to come,” mentioned Josephine Martensson-Hemsted. “I guess I’ll start baking, because there’s nobody else that has this kind of quality anywhere in the area.”
Sigrid’s Cafe and Fantastic Bakery closes without end on Dec. 31 at 3 p.m.
