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Necessity is the mother of invention. This was certainly the experience of Simon Sailer, an Austrian confectioner and baker from Mauerkirchen. In the town twelve kilometres southeast of Braunau am Inn, his grandfather founded the Sailer bakery and confectioner’s shop in 1961. The business, which is located on the market square and is now run by his parents, also includes a café. When the COVID pandemic started, the Sailers lost not only revenue from their café, but also income from the business with their catering customers. Those customers had been forced to close their cafés and restaurants. It also happened to be the time when people in many countries were panic-buying rolls and rolls of toilet paper. The jokes and memes about this hoarding behaviour gave 25-year-old Simon and a colleague confectioner at the Sailer bakery an ingenious idea: toilet paper cakes!
Simon Sailer's creative toilet paper cake
Made as the delicious “Sacher” and “Punsch” styles of cake on the inside, and shaped into toilet rolls with a thin layer of marzipan on the outside, the little cakes even had the obligatory hole in the middle and loose flap of “paper” for tearing off. They came in white, pink, and blue. And the humorous and scrumptious cakes were a big hit with the customers. They even generated positive coverage in the regional and national media.
During the pandemic, aside from the toilet roll cakes, the bakery’s loyal customers were of course able to enjoy the whole range of goods. “In addition to local home deliveries, we were offering a breakfast delivery service, which was very well received,” Simon Sailer reports.
The family-run business with 60 employees sadly could not avoid cutting work hours short – like so many others during this time – but it was at least able to offset some of the losses with this creativity.
The popular Knoblauchstangerl
In their bakery, the Sailers are using a ROLLFIX plus dough sheeter. “We basically have it running non-stop,” Simon grins. And combined with then MULTIFLEX L 700 acquired in March this year, the bakery now also has a multitude of new and diverse possibilities. Thanks to specialised accessories, they can use their dough line for just about every product in their range. For example, they use a CSV compact vacuum coiler to make the ever-popular garlic bread sticks. These light snacks are made from thin dough cut in a trapezoidal shape and baked with garlic butter. The combination of stamping and coiling processes also makes for smooth production of the regional speciality “Braunauer Kipferl”, an Austrian croissant filled with marzipan and sprinkled with almonds.
Simon with his uncle Adi Sailer in Fukuoka
Simon learned from growing up in his parents’ bakery and confectioner’s shop that you can make the most delicious things from dough. “While other kids were playing in the sandbox, my brother and I were shaping little pastries out of flour and dough. You can’t really eat cakes made from sand. But our first attempts at baking were good enough to offer to others and even bring them a little joy,” Simon recounts his first experiences in the bakery.
Choosing this profession was a free but very obvious choice for the two siblings. After school, Simon first went to train as a confectioner for three years at “Der Tortenmacher” bakery in Salzburg.
Next, he spent a year in his parent’s business learning everything a baker needs to know. Thus prepared, in 2019, he went to spend six months in Fukuoka, Japan, where his uncle had founded a bakery and confectionery in 1994.
Today his uncle, Adolf Sailer, employs around 90 people in this city located in the south of Japan. In addition to typical Austrian products, he produces pastries with exotic fillings such as figs, chilli, matcha (powdered green tea) or sweet beans.
Simon at the Euroskills 2020
Snacks are especially popular in the Land of the Rising Sun – an insight that would come to Simon’s benefit later on. “Japanese customers attach great importance to precision and cleanliness in their products. This is also reflected in their work mentality, where employees adhere to exact schedules and expect precise definitions of their tasks,” Simon reports on his experiences.
“The work is fast-paced, but still very exact. Working twelve hours or more a day at a Japanese bakery and having only ten days of holiday per year is far from the Austrian bakery where I grew up,” Simon relates about the working world in Japan.
His experience with creative success during the COVID crisis and the experience he gained in Japan put Simon in a good position for his next challenge.
Encouraged by his teacher Erwin Heftberger from the master school in Wels, he prepared under his guidance for the “EuroSkills 2020” championship. This European vocational competition is held every two years in about 45 professions.
Due to the pandemic, it was postponed by one year but ultimately took place as originally organised in Graz. On the two-year road to this competition, Simon invested numerous weekends in preparation. Together with his mentor, he experimented with many different doughs and products. And learned the most from things that went wrong.
„The problem with producing on a single machine is that the butter quickly gets smeared around and contaminates the line. With the CSV compact, which we discovered at the FRITSCH World of Bakery, production is as good as you normally only get by hand“
Simon Sailer about challenges of baked goods production
Simon on stage during his acceptance speech
Simon celebrating with his Grandfather
Simon and the Austrian president Dr. Alexander Van der Bellen
Simon after the win
Focused during the competition
The crowd cheered with Simon
The delicious variety of the Sailer bakery
In the summer of 2021, the four-day competition commenced. Not even the participants knew what their tasks would be until they were revealed on the first day. Luckily for Simon, he was prepared for anything. One task he was given was to make a certain product in a set amount of time; another was to bake a product using at least seven ingredients from a given list of twelve ingredients. It was a close race right up to the very last day but, in the end, Simon impressed the judges with his perfected snacks – and took home the gold medal.
Four products that Simon developed for the “EuroSkills” can still be found in the counter at the Sailer bakery today: croissants with diverse colours and fillings, a rustic baguette, fruit bread with hazelnuts and walnuts, and colourful brioches.
This is how Simon shares his success with his customers.
