Jane traded numbers and Excel for dough

Kringel is a cosy vegan café in the heart of Tallinn. All the baked goods, cakes and pastries on sale are made without eggs, butter or milk, many of them by Jane's skilful hands.

It's half past four in the morning. Tallinn is still fast asleep, the streets are empty and not even the trams have started running yet. The kitchen of Kringel Café on the corner of Koidu Street and Planeedi Street is already warm despite the winter chill. Jane is bustling around the crackling stove and flour-covered tables. She's a young baker in her twenties, with an infectious smile, who starts her day when most of us are still asleep.

"I'm not really a morning person at all," she grins. "My alarm rings at quarter to three and the work day starts at half past four. But I only really wake up once the first pastries start to rise and the kitchen smells nice."

Childhood pancake cake and grandma's meat pies

Jane's journey as a baker didn't start in a café kitchen at all, but at her grandmother's house in Saaremaa. "We had a tradition of making all the meat pies with my grandmother for every Christmas dinner," she recalls. "I was young, but I really liked the feeling of making something together and it going on the table for the whole family."

One memory in particular stands out in her mind – a pancake cake that didn't quite go to plan. "I was waiting for my grandmother to come home from work and I wanted to surprise her,” she laughs. “I figured I couldn’t be bothered baking them one pancake at a time, so I'd just pour the whole batter into the pan at once. The edges finally cooked, the middle was still liquid and to be honest it didn't taste very good... but they ate it anyway," Jane recalls how she liked to experiment in the kitchen as a child.

The accountant who found her way to dough

If someone had told Jane in high school that she was going to be a baker, she would probably have laughed. At school, she liked maths instead.

"After high school, I didn't know exactly what to do," recalls the young baker. “I took a year off and looked for something to study while working. That's how I ended up in accounting.”

She studied, found a professional job and worked for several years in the world of numbers. But somewhere in the back of her mind was still the desire to make something by hand. "Accounting suits me really well, but I guess it's a bit of a dry job. And then you need something else to do with your hands."

The turning point came unexpectedly. At one point, Jane just had the urge to make a croissant. She experimented at home, offered the baked goods to a family friend and got a question that she couldn’t forget. "He asked me, quite sincerely, if I had studied to be a baker, because he would like to order from me. It was the first time anyone had ever seen me as a real baker. Even though I was unsure of my skills, I made him those kringles and I think that's where the courage came from."

A few weeks later, Jane saw an advertisement on Facebook: winter admission to pastry school. "I figured I had some free time, I was interested in the subject and the course only lasted a year. I applied... and I got in."

She studied to be a baker at the Kuressaare Ametikool vocational school by going to school and visiting her grandmother in Saaremaa once a month and working in Tallinn the rest of the time. The apprenticeship had to be done in a bakery, and that's how she ended up at Kringel. "I did an apprenticeship here and stayed on immediately afterwards. Now I'm doing two things at the same time – accounting and baking – and to be honest, it's the perfect balance for me."

Early morning routine and two rounds of baked goods

The idea of starting the day before sunrise may sound romantic, but Jane makes no secret of the fact that this is the hardest part of the job. "I'm not an early riser by nature, but somehow I've managed. Sometimes, I take a little nap after work and then life goes on."

All this to make sure that even the earliest sweet tooth can get their hands on a pastry or two. "The first baskets of bread have to be full by eight o'clock, or nine o'clock on weekends," she explains. "In between, we fit all the kringle and other orders. Usually we make two rounds of baked goods. The first one for the morning, the second for later customers."

When a visitor opens the door to Kringel Café in the morning and sees a counter full of cinnamon rolls, buns, cakes and savoury snacks, it does not look like someone woke up at 4am and started mixing dough. But that is how it always is.

New ideas every day

At Kringel Café, bakers have to constantly put their creativity to the test. Every day, a "kringle of the day" is born, the flavour of which is agreed on in the morning. "It's a place where we can express our creativity," says Jane. "Sometimes at home I wonder what flavours I would like to try. Sometimes I just look around at what's in the cupboards and put the flavours together."

One winter morning, she looked over the kitchen stock: biscoff spread and sea-buckthorn jam. "I don't really like sea buckthorn, but I thought I'd put them together and see what happens. At first I didn't even want to taste it. But when I tried it, I was really surprised. For the first time in my life, sea buckthorn tasted really good."

Of course, not all experiments are fit for sale. "I wanted to make a slightly spicier kringle, so I added gingerbread spice and cardamom to the cinnamon filling," she laughs. “My mind was completely elsewhere and I put at least four times too much spice in it. The result... was very spicy. My family kind of liked it, one of my friends was happy to eat it, but I didn't dare put it on sale.”

Nonetheless, she considers learning from her mistakes to be an essential part of being a baker. "Not everything works, but each time, you think about what you could do differently next time. It helps to constantly evolve."

A vegan café that has also pampered the baker herself

Kringel is a vegan café, which means that all the pastries, cakes and savoury snacks are made from plant-based ingredients. To an outsider, this may seem like a limitation, but for Jane it is an exciting challenge.

"In recent years, the selection of vegan raw ingredients has expanded so much," she says. "For example, we have a cheese roll that tastes just like a normal cheese roll. Things have just evolved so much."

It has also changed her own tastes. "I've gotten so used to vegan things lately that when I tried a regular spinach pie with real butter, all I could taste was... cow," she laughs. "I’m sure it was good, but my tongue has just been retrained to a different taste."

The secret of Kringel's Shrove Tuesday bun is in the cream

When it comes to freshly made Shrove Tuesday buns, Jane's eyes visibly light up. Tallinn Bun Fest brings even more bun lovers to Kringel. And she is ready for it.

"I think it's the cream that makes our Shrove Tuesday bun special," she says, a little mysteriously. "I've tried it with regular whipped cream, but it's just not it. Our cream is completely different. Special. You have to try it for yourself."

Exactly what it contains, however, remains a secret. "Oh, I don't know if it's okay to tell you like that, I'd better not risk it," laughs Jane. "Let's just say you can't have the recipe, but you can certainly taste it."

Everyone should try being a baker

Jane also has a message for anyone wondering whether a career in baking could be their path. "I think everyone should at least try it," she says. "It's such a creative job. Of course, not everything works out, but every failure is a teachable moment. And when it finally works... when you look at that croissant or that bun and think – oh my god, I made that myself... it's just such a good feeling."

You can also bring joy to so many others. "As a baker, you can always cheer someone up. People order kringles for special occasions. In the beginning you just have flour, water, yeast and sugar. And then suddenly you've got something that puts a smile on someone's face. It's quite a special responsibility."

It is already quite late. At least for Jane. It is late in the morning, with café-goers enjoying their first lattes and difficult decisions between slices of kringle, pastries and buns being made at the counter. At the same time, a new dough starts to rise behind the kitchen doors. For Jane, however, it's just one of many days in the Kringel kitchen doing what she really loves.