Hustle and bustle at the Domberger bakery. The neighbourhood is already queuing up for bread, pretzels and cinnamon buns just before opening time. A student trainee is moulding pretzels, dough is being worked and loaves are being sold. You can watch every step of the process in the glass bakery. At the oven, master baker Ben grabs a knife and sweepingly carves patterns into the loaves of bread before pushing a long tray full of loaves into the oven with a helping hand.

Between ongoing production and sales, today's focus is on the state of the artisanal baking. Ralf Tschentscher is a master baker and did his apprenticeship near Eisenhüttenstadt when he was 17 - over 30 years ago. "Not that much has changed since then," he says. "But back then I was at least able to afford a flat from my training salary." Currently, the salary in the first year of training is around 680 euros gross per month. Ralf sees this as the first major hurdle for young people to decide in favour of an apprenticeship in the food craft. "If you're still living at home with your parents, that might be possible, but if you're striving for independence or possibly want to enter the profession as a career changer, then that's not an option."

Apprentices at Domberger who complete their training in the dual system of the Chamber of Crafts are paid the minimum wage - far more than the usual apprentice salary. Despite this, they learn not a single thing about sourdough or fermentation at vocational school. When Ralf did his master craftsman's diploma, he continues: "There was one day on the subject of ’Baking only with sourdough. Very briefly. There were some young instructors who were the instigators, but the older ones kept their fingers crossed. The quality and especially the content of the teaching are not up to date and tend to be industry-orientated." Nevertheless, Ralf doesn't want to cast the system in a bad light. He sees enormous potential in the dual training system that Germany is so famous for: theoretical knowledge at school, then practice-orientated application in the workplace.

Are there any efforts to update the training content? Ralf is also on the Chamber of Crafts' examination board for the apprenticeship and is therefore close to the centre of official training. "People are slowly rethinking things, there used to be workshops to exchange ideas. What do people want to learn? What is good training? How can companies be involved in new learning content?" Nevertheless, for Florian Domberger - the founder and Managing Director -, Ralf and Ben - the two Operations Managers -, the development of a reformed training system is the only logical conclusion. "Of course, we also want our people who are trained here to have something in their hands in the long term. We provide good training. The feedback is great. Hendrik, for example, is now in Australia, where he has his own bakery. He came here from the Ruhr area. He's actually a biochemist. Then he went to Sironi, then to Max Kugel in Bonn. Now he makes pretzels in Australia. He's been through the whole system.’

What does the internal training system actually look like? The training is based on a system of skill levels. At the last of four levels, bakers are able to manage the entire bakery. "The training also works according to the regeneration principle. Those who have been there longer teach what they have learnt to the newcomers. In four decentralised bakehouses, there is always one person who trains others. Ultimately, however, everyone is always remains in training. Learning never stops. Also not for me or Florian."

The two of them wrote and developed the training plans themselves. Responsibility is taken on directly during training. Apprentices work with the dough from day one. "And nobody has to spend their first year just scrubbing trays. ‘Learning years are not earning years‘, or old sayings like that are no longer up to date."

But will the trend towards artisan baking remain in the Berlin bubble and a few other places? Ralf is confident and sees the return to artisan baking with minimal ingredients and high quality standards as the way forward: "I have a former work colleague who works in a large bakery and he has incorporated the sourdough recipe for our ‘Beutebrot‘. So things are changing... But there simply aren't enough good bakers. Foodcrafts will simply die out if we don't do something about it."

Ralf shows what is done here in the bakery. Everyone works focussed and with full responsibility on the flour, dough, oven or counter. Many former bread workers have since become self-employed and ensure that the bakery trade lives on. There are currently 35 people with a wide variety of backgrounds working at Domberger Brot-Werk. Most of them are lateral entrants. They would probably not have become bakers and thus multipliers of the food trade via the conventional route. The Domberger team shows how artisan food is being revitalised - loaf by loaf. In the name of good bread.