SALIMA TECHNOLOGY
7.-9.2. 2023

The first act of the skill competition for the national title, "Baker of the Year 2014 - Junior", which began yesterday afternoon in the Hall V, could be with a slight exaggeration characterised as the calm before the storm. The only decoration of the bakery tables were paper signs with numbers one to fifteen like the number of finalists, the contestants drew ballots with their starting numbers just nearby. Today, with the stroke of ten o'clock, it started for real - young bakers compete in the production of bread and bakery products, on Thursday in manufacturing plaited Christmas cakes and confectionery and in the afternoon six bakers will attempt to break the record of in pleating thirty twists under the supervision of Dobrý den Agency from Pelhřimov. The current valid record from 2012 is 4 minutes and 5 seconds.

The 19^th edition of the competition, organized annually by the Business Association of Bakers and Confectioners of the Czech Republic as a technical guarantor of the International Milling Industry, Bakery and Confectionery Fair MBK, will involve 15 baking talents this year - 3 boys and 12 girls - from vocational schools in Brno, České Budějovice, Jeseník, Kroměříž, Nová Paka, Opava, Pardubice, Smiřice and Valašské Meziříčí. In front of the judges and visitors, each competitor will produce four pieces of wheat-rye bread, hand-shaped pastry in a time limit, hand-knitted Christmas cakes and large Chodsko harvest cakes.

Yesterday, visitors could see nine confectionery and four bakery products that will be, judged by the jury in the Attractive Product of the Year 2014 competition in the coming days. A look into the display cases suggests these are not only tasty items, but also small works of art, whose production could take weeks. Animals made of marzipan come to life before your eyes, the wedding cake is a real sweet temptation and a black-and-white checkerboard seems so plausible that even the chess master Garry Kasparov would certainly not reject it as a birthday gift.  

The aim of the “Baker of the Year” skill competition is especially the promotion of baking and crafts, professional growth of competitors, increasing of their skills, motivation and strengthening of interest in the field. Talented bakers can also attract future employers. Skilful baker apprentices are sought-after and usually also well-paid. Also since only about six hundred pupils are learning in this programme in the Czech Republic today, which not very much in a field of twenty thousand employees.