Baking bread is about giving people hope, believes Oleksandr Sobko, owner of an authentic bakery in Vytacheve
Oleksandr and his wife dreamed of having their own bakery – a wood-fired bakery where they could prepare bread using traditional Ukrainian recipes. The couple began to realize their dream just before the full-scale war began – they purchased equipment and started building the premises. However, on February 24, 2022, all peaceful plans were shattered. The Sobko family began baking bread in their almost unfinished bakery and distributing it to soldiers and local residents who could not care for themselves. Learn how this small bakery business became part of a large volunteer initiative, organizing bread delivery to the front lines in the project “Kashtan.Business”.
“You do what you have to do, and let it be what it will be”
According to Oleksandr Sobko, the idea to start baking bread during the first days of the war came from his wife.
“I said, ‘What bread? What are you talking about? There’s a war!’ But she went and saw that there was nothing in the stores. We had to think about what to do next. ‘No, no, we need to give people hope,’ that was her phrase. I replied, ‘Come back, let’s talk.’ Of course, I was irritated, in that state, you remember, the darkest day of my life. And she comes back and says we need to bake bread. There’s nothing anywhere, but people need to know that we will hold the defense, and bread is another point of support,” Oleksandr recalls.
On February 25, 2022, the couple was tidying up the unfinished bakery in Vytacheve, cleaning up the construction mess. By February 26, they had already baked their first loaf of bread.
1 “We started to bring everything in order and sent a message in the village group. Within half a day, we had half a ton of flour here, and a lot of oil; everyone responded with understanding. Even professional volunteers appeared, who had come from Kyiv to spend this time here. They were bakers who worked in chains and supermarkets, and they came to help us. Fantastic guys and girls, there were five of them, and they helped us bake bread for about a month or a month and a half,” the bakery owner recalls.
The baked bread was taken to a hub in Hatne, from where it was sent to soldiers holding the defense in the Kyiv region, as well as to elderly people in Vytacheve who could not take care of themselves. The bakers worked practically without rest: Oleksandr recalls that they only slept three to four hours a day during that time.
“The alarm was very deep. It was a state of profound anxiety. It left a significant impression on me, as everything turned into one continuous line of time. Bread, yes. You do what you have to do, and let it be what it will be – this formula saved us. Moreover, we promoted on social media that one dollar feeds four people with bread for a whole day. We calculated at that time based on cost: labor was free, the bakery was free, transportation was free, electricity was free. Conditionally, we only needed flour. We promoted this and started receiving donations from all over the world. Donations came through the power of social networks, and the geography was fantastic: we received donations from Chile, America, China, Australia, Korea, Israel, all over Europe, and more,” Oleksandr says.
2 “Bread must be authentic”
After the expulsion of Russian occupiers from Kyiv region, the “Vytach” bakery continued to supply bread to the front lines.
“After this acute period ended, we realized that our bread was needed. And it was especially needed at the front, because very often supplies were delayed, and the bread arrived stale or even worse than stale. But our bread – it’s sourdough, it doesn’t spoil for a week, two weeks. It simply dries out, that’s all. And we still send bread and crackers. We bake more than we need, and all this surplus, which accumulates roughly like one day a week, we send to the guys,” Oleksandr Sobko shares.
3 The bread at the “Vytach” bakery is indeed made according to ancient Ukrainian recipes. The idea to open a bakery came to the Sobko family inspired by the beauty surrounding Vytacheve. The Sobko house is located just a hundred meters from a wooden chapel and a wooden mill, built on the Gorodyshe hill in the 1990s at the initiative of the famous Ukrainian writer Oles Berdnyk.
4 “This is a very historical place. And as a family, we take care of this place. There was no budget before, and there is still no budget in the communities to maintain this place. So we started cleaning it up with our own funds. We created parking, established a pedestrian zone, made it pedestrian-friendly year-round. We built a toilet, a waste disposal area... Over time, more and more guests began to visit this place. People would knock on the door and ask for food and drink – the house looks quite colorful, and some thought it was a restaurant,” Oleksandr recalls.
Ultimately, the couple decided to establish a public catering establishment – not a bar or a tent selling cheap beer, but a bakery that would produce genuine bread.
5 “Something authentic should emerge here, something that corresponds to this place, something that people will truly enjoy and value. Since there was a mill here, which was also built by Oles Berdnyk in 1992, but this mill never ground flour, despite having real millstones inside – and they are ancient stones, several centuries old – we understood that this was a hint. And we decided to build a wood-fired bakery because this place is genuine, it’s real, it’s true. Thus, the bread must be true, authentic – made with sourdough, baked in a wood-fired oven, following technologies that have been around for thousands of years,” believes the owner of “Vytach.”
Watch the full interview with Oleksandr on the YouTube channel of Kashtan.NEWS.