Danish bakery opened in Christchurch

Press, Volume CXI, Issue 32541, 26 February 1971, Page 5

Danish bakery opened in Christchurch

Life in a home bakery is no holiday, as one Christchurch family, the Cyckomas, have found—their day begins at 3.30 a.m., and sometimes earlier.

Specialising in Danish pastries, Mr and Mrs J. Cyckoma and their daughter, Anni, aged 18, have just recently opened their “conditiore” (Danish for a combined bakery and coffee shop) in Manchester Street. “We make everything we sell, including the bread for the open sandwiches,” said Mrs Cyckoma. Although Mrs Cyckoma has been in New Zealand for 12 years, she had always remained a housewife.

The Continental Fair, last October, changed all that As a member of the Scandinavian Club, Mrs Cyckoma with two other women, organised the cooking of the “restaurant for a day” at the fair. “It was a great success and I thought, why don’t we open something like this.” Their daughter, Anni, left her job as a bank clerk and joined her parents in their new venture. , Mrs Cyckoma is the trainstay of the family business, having had extensive baking experience. Before her marriage in Denmark, she worked in a large home bakery and was an assistant chef in a private home. She also learnt from her own mother and was a com-

petent cook by the age of 14, she said. Not only is the food Danish, but so is the atmosphere, with warm wood pannelling three quarters of the way up the walls and the remainder a deep peachy red.

. Mrs Cyckoma wants the banish flavour to extend to the service and hopes that she will not have to employ outside help. “Except to wash dishes.” , “The serving and baking must be done by the family, otherwise we can’t offer personal service.” PERSONAL RECIPES Recipe books play little part in Mrs Cyckoma’s baking; most of the recipes come from her previous experience with added individual variations. And what exactly are Danish pastries? The Cyckomas could not really explain but said that it might just be that Danish pastry was a name to cover the enormous variations of doughs and cakes made in Denmark. “In Denmark, from corner to comer, you would not find two Danish home bakeries making the same pastries. They are all different,” said Mrs Cyckoma. In their small bakery they already had seven types of dough with many varieties of fillings, producing over, 20 different cakes each day. The pastries made were varied from day to day. WINTER FARE “We will start making cream cakes in the winter. Often in Denmark in the summer you couldn’t buy cream cakes. The more fatty pastries like that are kept for the winter,” she said. Apart from proper marzipan almost all the ingredients they required for their baking were available in New Zealand.

Although most Danish housewives would buy their bread and pastries in Denmark from bakeries, most of their customers were Christchurch people. “I think the banish people here learnt to bake their own when their was no bakery. I know I did more baking at home in New Zealand than ever in Denmark,” she said. Apart from the pastries, Mrs Cyckoma and Aimi make spiced pork and liver pate, as well as a rye bread for diabetics.

The response so far had been very good from Christchurch people—a regular custom had been established. Perhaps an added attraction to the tempting pastries is the fact that the “conditiore” opens at 7,30 a.m.