Kuźmiuk Bakery in the 1970s. Furmańska Street, Lublin

‘Warm aroma wafts from bakeries, and so does silence from unopened gates’ – a famous poet from Lublin, Józef Czechowicz, wrote in 1934 in A Poem about Lublin. Those pre-war bakeries are gone. None survived the 2WW. At present time, the oldest bakery in Lublin, operating continuously since Christmas 1944, is the Kuźmiuk Bakery. Just like in aforementioned poem, in the silence of the night you can smell the aroma of batches of bread coming out from the oven on Furmańska Street in Lublin, as has been the case for 79 years, in the same place.

Successive generations of the family have been making sure that the traditional, unchanging recipes are followed, for bread without enhancers, preservatives or ready-made mixes.
This is where the starter, otherwise known as leaven, kept in fermentation continuously for several decades, is nurtured. Rye sourdough is produced from it. This process does not make allowances for any breaks, holidays, weekends or even major events in the family’s life, as the sourdough starter invariably requires care. And it can be moody, sensitive to the weather and many other factors. In Kuźmiuk Bakery it is made using the method as old as the time, in traditional bowls, without the use of mechanical equipment. And the process will remain that way.

The family’s bread-making traditions are long. They date back to the turn of the 1920s and 1930s. At that time, Włodzimierz Kuźmiuk learnt the craft by working in a bakery in Brest Litovsk. After he started a family, he began running his own bakery. He found his place on earth in Czeremcha in Podlasie. Unfortunately, in the very first days of the war, the bakery was completely destroyed by bombing. The next important place was Piaski near Lublin. There, Włodzimierz Kuźmiuk ran a bakery that he had leased. That place was well remembered by Włodzimierz’s sons, the older Anatol and the younger one Sergiusz, both future master bakers. And since it was the time of the Nazi occupation, during which the ghetto in Piaski was liquidated, the memories were also dramatic and remained in the minds of then the little boys for the rest of their lives.

Master Baker, Sergiusz Kuźmiuk, who ran the bakery for more than 50 years.

Photo by Kuba Wójtowicz, 2010
The photo is from ‘Eastern Wall – Craftsmen of Lublin’ publication.

Portraits of the Craftsmen of Lublin

Photo by Kuba Wójtowicz, 2010
The photo is from the ‘Eastern Wall – Craftsmen of Lublin’ publication.

Since December 1944, the bakery has been operating in Lublin on Furmańska Street. For a short time it went by the name of ‘Piekarnia Kresowa’ (Borderland Bakery). The bread baked in 1944, for the first Christmas after the city’s liberation, wasn’t very good. Baked in an underheated oven, it was unripe and grey coloured, but it got loaded into baskets by local women vendors and was sold ‘like hot cakes’. And so it began…