Bjarke Svendsgaard

2023

Baker

Scholarship in honour of Ken Johnstone

I would like to go and experience the different cultures of baking around the world. I hope to improve how I do my craft and expand on the knowledge I have, and learn how to use this knowledge in improving both products and processes back here in my workplace.

I was recently selected to represent Tasmania in a national apprentice baking competition in Sydney, called the LA Judge Awards. I am really proud of being selected for this competition and winning it. It really helped in boosting my passion for baking and wanting to continue investing my time and effort in it.

Sustainability is important to me as I enjoy going out into nature and experiencing the wilderness. By constantly consuming and using more resources than necessary we end up destroying these environments.

Companies around the world changing their packaging from single use plastic to compostable cardboard packaging. I find this inspiring as people are actively trying to reduce the waste that goes to landfill, to create less pollution of the land and oceans.

From this scholarship I hope to learn how to save on power and single usage plastic in the baking industry. To get to this goal I hope to learn the way sourdough cultures and natural yeasts can be used to reduce manufactured packaged yeast. Also I hope to learn how to use dry proofing techniques to reduce the time and energy needed to constantly run a proofer.

With my scholarship I am hoping to travel to Italy or Spain. Those two countries do a lot of work in artisan breads, especially sourdoughs. I would like to learn how to make these types of bread that do not use commercial factory yeast to make their products.