Driving along a dangerously misty N2 at 3.45am, Ive felt fresher. Catching up with a friend over a bottle of wine a mere five hours earlier was probably not the best course of action before an early-bird excursion. And because I cant see any more than a metre into the foggy abyss, Ive been forced to slack down to 60km an hour, making me late.

The scene playing out in front of me when I finally arrive at Stellenboschs Oude Bank Bakkerij at around 4.20am is like something from a romantic foreign film: a young, aproned baker clad in a white tee, brown corduroys and a pair of old-fashioned braces, is sweeping out the ash from a wood-fired sandstone oven, while a cauldron-like dough mixer filled with fermenting dough gently bubbles away to the sound of an instrumental Amélie ditty.

Fritz Schoon, artisan baker and star of this story, simply smiles when I ask him whether this whole getting-up-at-the-crack-of-dawn business doesnt become tedious after a while. ‘This is actually my favourite part of the day,’ he says. ‘Alone, with no-one else around, its my quiet time before everything gets crazy.’

Astutely deducing that Im in dire need of a pick-me-up, Fritz hands me a cup of coffee, and after I comment on the exquisite wood-eared ceramic cup its served in, he tells me that it was designed by his mother, Jenny. ‘Actually, everything you see around you was done by her,’ he adds. ‘The wrought-iron chandeliers, the tables, the chairs … she even sourced the floorboards and ceiling beams from a scrapyard in Lansdowne, which is also where we got those bevelled windows in the dining area.’ 

As Fritz goes back to kneading, cutting, weighing and shaping his signature sourbread rounds with an almost machine-like rhythm and precision, its hard to imagine that hes ever been anything but a baker. 

‘I studied quantity surveying,’ he says when I ask how he ended up at the helm of Stellenboschs hippest new hangout. ‘When I started working on a development site, I noticed that many of the builders arrived on an empty stomach and went home hungry at the end of the day, so I came up with the idea of setting up a kiosk on the site. The developers werent very happy with it, so I approached other contractors, and soon I had my own business.’

‘To save money, I employed someone to bake bread for the kiosks, and after a while we were doing so well that we were even supplying catering companies,’ he continues. ‘Unfortunately, we were completely in over our heads and, in the end, we made a huge loss.’

Broke and back to square one, Fritz decided to pursue his interest in artisanal baking, and started investigating where he could do an apprenticeship. Returning from a business trip to Knysna, his dad, Smiley, came back with the news that hed found just the place: Île de Pain.

‘When I approached Markus Färbinger, he told me that I wasnt the first person who had asked to come and work for him,’ says Fritz. ‘He told me to think seriously about whether this was what I wanted to do, and if I still felt the same in two weeks time, that I should drop him an e-mail. Two weeks later there was a message waiting for him in his inbox.’ 

Fritzs trial by wood fire lasted for almost two years, starting right at the bottom and steadily climbing the ranks to become an expert artisan. It was during this time that he met two of the key players in his current five-man bakery band: Gizelle van der Merwe, an ICA graduate and Oude Bank Bakkerijs chef-manager, who also spent a stint at Île de Pain, and Fritzs right-hand-man, Ladis Bapina, who started out as a security guard outside Mon Petit Pain. 

‘Ladis used to stare at me through the shop window while I was kneading bread,’ reminisces Fritz. ‘At first I thought it was kind of creepy, but then I realised that he was merely interested in the whole process. I asked him whether hed like me to train him, and he replied “For sure”.’

Fritz ended up getting into quite a spot of trouble for distracting Ladis from his guarding duties and the two had to put their clandestine trainee programme on ice until Fritz made the move down to Stellenbosch. ‘I immediately gave Ladis a call to offer him a job as assistant baker,’ he says. True to form, Ladis promptly answered ‘For sure’.

At about 5.30 am, as Fritz meticulously starts rolling out a batch of tapered baguettes from a seemingly lifelike blanket of dough, Gizelle enters the door, newspaper in hand. Chatting to her about the food, it transpires that the menu was drawn up with the sole purpose of showcasing Fritzs loaves. ‘We did a lot of research on producers in the area,’ she says. ‘Because the bread is such an elementary thing, were very particular about which butter, honey, jams and cheeses we use. Like us, the producers have to work on a very small scale, and as naturally as possible.’

‘We really believe in our producers,’ concurs Fritz, ‘thats why weve put their pictures up in the dining area.’

Indeed, the gallery reads like a whos who of the micro producers’ fraternity: creamy cheeses by Klein Rivier, Ganzvlei Vastrap and Forest Hill, olives from Delvera and legs of Spanish-style hams by Eat In Produce Award winner Lucas Jamon.

Ladis is next to rock up. Whistling, he starts mixing the dough for the wild-oat loaves headed for Rust en Vrede. ‘So you also do outside orders?’ I ask Fritz. ‘Only for them,’ he answers. ‘David Higgs walked in here one day and asked me to supply the restaurant with bread. At the time I had no idea who he was and asked him how I could be certain that he wouldnt serve his diners day-old bread!’

By 7.45am Fritz has divided, shaped and neatly nestled his coriander honey-rye loaves into their respective proving baskets, fed a batch of rustiques into the oven and is removing his S-inscribed sourdoughs. Bakings not a profession for a loskop, I muse. No wonder Fritz diligently scribbles down all the day’s happenings in his logbook. 

The rest of the team, Abigail Ndoro, barista and waitress, and Primrose Matyholo, dishwasher supreme, has also joined us in the meantime, and are hard at work when Fritz signals that its time to get some grub before the masses arrive.

Feeling quite honoured to partake in their daily ritual, I take a seat at the table with the rest of the gang and watch as Fritz slices one of the oven-fresh sourdoughs. As I slather a thick smear of farm butter and a few slow-roasted tomatoes onto my piping-hot piece of bread, I listen as Fritz gently delegates the day’s tasks. I dont know whether it’s the groups sense of camaraderie, the lack of sleep or the gloriously crusty bread, but suddenly Im feeling quite overcome. 

My emotional moment is short-lived, however, as Fritz quips, ‘Maybe its time for you to go and get in bit of work for the day.’

Its 8.30am. The man makes a good point.

By Annette Klinger