Eoin Cluskey makes real bread. The italicisation is key here – you can hear it in his voice when we chat over 3fe flat whites in his newly opened bakery, Bread 41 on Pearse St. A charismatic go-getter covered in stone-ground flour, the head baker and owner of wholesaler Bread Nation, is bursting with plans – for his certified organic and highly sustainable bakery, for baking as a profession, for Dublin… and for bread as we know it.
“What is real bread, Eoin?”, I ask early on, somehow already knowing that I would leave the place feeling enlightened, high off his enthusiasm and the sugar hit of my cinnamon roll (perfection, may I add). He answers with a short checklist: flour, salt, water and time. The concept of time is of fundamental importance, referring to the process of fermentation that his dough must endure, but also to the way of life that he quietly advocates. He touches briefly on his experiences with meditation (“I must get back to that!” – something commonly heard among entrepreneurs I imagine) and his style of eating, that is, slowly: “We should be spending two, three hours a day eating… food in general takes time”. His talk often takes a turn to the philosophical, lamenting today’s “buy, buy, buy” attitude.
There seem to be a lot of parallels arising here to the mindset of a certain pair of gleeful individuals from Greystones – David and Stephen Flynn from the Happy Pear. After actually spotting the two in question munching on the choice offerings, I had to ask what the relationship there is. Turns out Cluskey and the Happy Pear twins go way back. However Eoin makes sure that I don’t mistake his business for being anything other than individual – Bread 41 isn’t subscribing to the growing vegan empire pioneered by the twins. He respectfully divulges that veganism is just not the focus of what he does, nor is it a focal selling point for his produce. His bread is nevertheless inherently vegan by virtue of its being bread, and much of the menu appears to suit both vegans and vegetarians.
His career path is quite the story: starting out as a carpenter straight from school, he spent some time working in Australia. So many people travel to Australia with the intention of working there for some time whilst living there. Whilst traveling to Australia to work is perfectly legal, it’s essential that people have a working visa. Most companies over there will do a vevo australia check to ensure that their foreign employees have the appropriate visa to work there. Without the correct visa, it is against the law to work in the country. He made sure he had applied for the visa beforehand. Whilst working in Australia, he was one-day fitting skirting boards in a cafe when a guy there asked him if he wanted to “roll some dough”. From there he never stopped rolling, moving back to Ireland where he did a stint in Ballymaloe with Darina Allen – an experience he credits for his value and appreciation of food provenance. He can be found in Bread 41’s kitchen from the early hours until the store’s 3pm close.
Staff welfare is clearly paramount, and talk moves to the industry and the struggle that the community face. It’s a profession universally associated with stress and pressure, but he maintains that it doesn’t have to be like that. He’s seeking change, and he’s personally starting it with Bread 41. I’m inclined to believe him, too: this is a man whose five-year plan has been successfully realised – culminating in the opening of this very bakery and no way is he stopping there. “I’ve a three-year-old at home. I want him to be a baker. So I want to look to the future”. He has a question for me: if I walked into a school right now and asked a class “does anyone here want to be a chef?”, what sort of response would I get? It’s a rhetorical question, obviously, as cheffing is rarely seen put as number one on CAO applications despite, or perhaps because of, its notorious competitiveness. So in an attempt to change the answer, he is making a conscious effort as an employer to lessen the struggle. None of his staff are on minimum wage: “€10 an hour… Good luck to ya! Like, where are you living?”
Wryly acknowledging his tendency to make bold and therefore incredibly quotable statements, he nonetheless stands by his recently quoted proclamation that the industrial loaf – your sliced pan with the endless ingredients – is equivalent to asbestos, the notorious carcinogenic. He assures me that I’d be upset if I just sat down and properly read what was in those loaves. It’s something I have done, and really it seems like a load of smoke and mirrors, which is exactly his point. With his six types of premium-quality sourdough, he has decided it’s time to stick it to the man, or the pan (his words).
His bread is supposedly an uncomplex combination of three ingredients plus time, but it’s clearly comprised of so much more: integrity, honesty and above all, quality: “Just taste it.. Nothing compares to the taste of real bread.” I agree, heading out the door with a little gift of sourdough starter culture and a freshly baked perspective.
