Kuldīga bakery launches new seed breads with raisins and garlic

A bakery in Kuldīga has introduced two new products after roughly a year of development: a seed bread with raisins and a seed bread with garlic. The recipes were developed largely by Lana Kulberga, a former colleague at the bakery.

According to data entry operator Mairita Kraule-Štolce, seeds are the main ingredient in both breads, with flour added only in an amount sufficient to hold the loaf together. Customers had long been requesting a garlic bread, while the raisin version began as an experiment. Both final recipes emerged after multiple trial batches with varying ingredient ratios.

Adjusting the oven and process

Bakery manager Uģis Martinsens recalls that the small loaves initially burned in the large ovens, requiring experimentation with oven settings, temperature and steam. Preserving the garlic's flavor and aroma proved especially difficult, since garlic tends to lose its scent during baking. The company declines to reveal exactly how it solved this, calling it their own recipe.

Before going on sale, the new breads were taste-tested at the bakery itself and offered to shoppers at the Kuldīga market and small local stores. Making the bread takes about a full day — preparing ingredients, letting the dough ferment, hand-shaping the loaves, baking, and cooling before packaging.

Because the process is done by hand and the bread contains a large amount of seeds, both production costs and the sales price are higher than usual, so the loaves are baked in limited quantities. The new breads are available at the Kuldīga market, the Kuldīgas labumi shop, the Sarma store, the JK filling station, and Aibe stores in the district. According to company representatives, customers currently choose the garlic bread more often, though both varieties are described as tasty enough to eat on their own, without any toppings.