Brød brings Danish bread to Argentina, eyes export opportunities

The company, which opened its doors in 2016, produces a range of sourdough breads, founder Lise Lundme Funch told FoodNavigator-LATAM.

Brød’s​ products are currently sold in several stores in the city of Buenos Aires and its surroundings. In addition, the company supplies hotels, restaurants and catering services. "Bread reaches our customers every day freshly baked"​, said Lundme Funch.

Short-term plans include expansion within the entire territory of Argentina and in the long term the company plans to export to neighbor countries like Uruguay and Paraguay.

Sourdough​

"In Brød we look for the handmade essence of a millennial product in a modern production. We make artisan bread with no preservatives or other additives: a real tasty and nutritious food,”​ she Lundme Funch. "The artisan´s baker work is a craft of technique, tact and patience; there are no shortcuts to obtain the desired result. ​

“All our breads are fermented with sourdough, which has rested for a minimum of 15 hours at low temperature, which ensures a gradual and respectful processing of the product to reach the quality bread that we offer daily to our customers.”​

"Cold fermentation with (mother mass) sourdough ensures a bread full of flavor, aroma and texture, preserves it in a natural way, improves its nutritional value and helps the digestion. We can maintain an artisan production and always ensure the best quality of our bread because our production is modular, which means we make bread in independent work islands, and the same team of bakers follows the bread from the kneading to the final product. In that way we make the best bread and take care of the welfare of our staff​,” she said.

The products​

Brød​​ currently produces eight different types of bread: The classic Danish, made from wheat flour, which is ideal to appreciate the taste of the sourdough; Bread with seeds, containing sunflower, flax and sesame seeds; Corn bread, which has a certain sweet taste; Mediterranean, which contains black olives and fine rosemary leaves; besides the Lolla, which is a version made with olive oil. It also offers the typical Brioche bread made with egg, milk and 100% butter; the Rustic bread based on whole meal flour; and Muesli bread with oats, raisins, honey and walnuts.

All these varieties are presented in several formats: 30 gr., 125 gr., 200 gr., 500 gr., 1 kg., and sliced.

From Denmark to Argentina​

Lundme Funch was born in a small Danish village in the countryside called Skive, and her childhood and adolescence were spent in a community with only twenty families, included her own. At 18, she moved to Copenhagen to finish high school and study anthropology at the university.

In 2007, after having traveled the world a lot, she participated in an academic exchange program that brought her to Buenos Aires. “When I arrived here, I felt something different: a blow of familiarity that I had never felt before,”​ she said. Although she stayed only for a short time, she felt very attracted to the Argentine culture.

Back in Denmark her life seemed to return to normal, but her mind and heart had been rooted forever in the enigmatic Buenos Aires and three years later she decided to restart her life there. "I came back knowing only that it was THE place in the world I wanted to be,”​ she said.

However, despite her excellent adaptation to this new culture, Lundme Funch felt that something was missing, something subtle and imperceptible that gradually took on flavor, aroma and texture. In Argentina, she had not succeeded in replacing something fundamental in her day-to-day life: Danish bread.

“In Buenos Aires, I stopped eating bread, because I missed the one we made in my childhood as a community and we sold Wednesdays ... I remember they paid us 10 Danish crowns​,”​ she said. “Danish bread is different, and the secret is in the mother mass and its fluffiness, which is very particular.”​

This was the simple reason that prompted her, in 2013, to make her own bread trying to achieve the desired taste. For this she took a bakery course and the product arrived with the expected taste. Word of mouth spread and she was soon distributing the bread around the city. “I took the orders on Mondays, on Tuesdays I would knead by hand, on Wednesdays I would give a second round and on early Thursdays I would bake and leave with my electric motorcycle to make the delivery.”​

Some Danish friends who had a hotel in the Buenos Aires neighborhood of San Telmo offered to lend her the kitchen so that she could make her bread more comfortably, and this led to a chance encounter with a business specialist staying at the hotel who proposed to scale her business. And Brød was born.

Bread traditions in Argentina​

Argentinians consume a lot of bread (the daily production is of about 70 kilos per capita) and the tendency of consumers to increasingly choose healthier, functional, and artisan breads, without additives or preservatives, suggests Brød will continue to grow in Argentina and beyond.