On the corner of the Highest with Pericleus, in Bath, there is a small oven that will hardly detect the eye of the one who does not know its existence. In front of him, the wood is arranged in piles, cut and ready to enter the fire. In a few hours they will have become raspberries in the large built wood oven and the smell of burnt wood will be mixed with that of freshly baked bread.
Here, for a few minutes, you remember how the real one once smelled. bread. Behind the counter is the Angel Margetis. He is 88 years old, born in 1938 in Corinth, with white hair, thin body standing and the hands of a man who spent almost his entire life by the fire. He wears his apron, catches the long furnace and moves in front of wood oven with a naturality that is not taught. It's the repeat decades, the memory of the hands.
The inscription says «Margetis Oven». That's the name of the store. The Athenians, however, who spend years in Loutraki have given him an informal name. «Grandpa's oven». A nickname that comes from mouth to mouth between vacationers and which Angel Margetis himself can even ignore.
At 88 years old, Corinthian's oldest baker and one of the oldest in the country is still up before dawn.
«Every morning at 4:30 in the morning, I'm here and production comes out at 9 in the morning.»He says. Five hours of preparation until the first loafs appear on the sheet. Bread with leaven, spinach pies, cheese pies, croissants, raisin bread and buns. Everything goes through the same oven, the same way he learned to bake more than six decades ago.
The store in this particular corner of Loutraki opened in 2007. But Angel Margetis' relationship with the oven goes far back. 1962 was the first year insured in then TEBE. In fact he already had years of work on his back, as he had started working since he was 18, when for many young children work began long before the first official appeared.
Since then, almost everything has changed. The ovens, machines, raw materials, consumer habits, and even the way we buy a loaf of bread.
He didn't change.
When you ask him what it is that can keep a man 88 years old still standing in front of a wood oven, dawn, his answer comes without second thought:
«I'm in love with the traditional oven, the wood oven».
He doesn't look good, though. He calls her a tiresome and belligerent. The fire needs experience, the temperature is not regulated by pressing a button and the baker needs to know when the oven is ready, how to distribute heat and when to put each product. But for him the difference is reflected in the result. He says that the products baked in the wood oven have different quality and insists particularly on bread with leaven. His philosophy is simple. Less interference, knowledge of raw material and time. No hurry.
Angel Margetis has had time to see and a whole market changing before his eyes. He remembers the time when, as he says, each oven actually had its own area and the distances between shops were longer. After the release of the profession the data changed and the ovens multiplied.
«Now they're next to each other, while they used to be 300 meters away.»He says.
What concerns him most today is the gradual removal of part of consumers from the neighborhood oven and the turn towards their standard bread large chains. He is strict in his judgment on the quality and origin of some of these products and believes that the consumer should know what he is buying. But how does one understand if the bread in his hands is really good?
For him, the answer is not only in appearance or price. «You must have a diet education.».
And he adds something that looks old-fashioned to an era of impersonal markets, but it is perhaps the whole philosophy of his little oven. The consumer must speak with his baker, know the man from whom he buys his bread and create a relationship of trust with him.
He'd prefer his neighborhood oven. In recent years, however, everyday life has become even more difficult. The increases in raw materials and overall operating costs have significantly reduced the margins of small enterprises. Angel Margetis says that many times the baker himself attempts to absorb some of the increases, even at the expense of his gain, in fear that otherwise the customer will be removed.
But talking to him is not just about bread. His life holds a large part of modern Greek history. She was a little kid in her years. Possession and still retains images from that time. He remembers the German's departure, but mostly remembers what happened to his family.
«When the Germans left I was five years old. I have a memory that my late father was in the Resistance, imprisoned in 1945. Released in 1957-58»A childhood marked by difficult years, a youth that passed through the work and then more than six decades in front of an oven.
And yet, at 88, Angel Margetis does not speak of pension. The next morning he'll be back here at 4:30.
He'll put the wood in the fire, wait for «Catch» The oven at the right temperature and, as Loutraki slowly begins to wake up, he will have already spent half his working day. Just before 9, the loaves will come out warm, with their crust baked and the characteristic smell that one no longer encounters. And then the people of the neighborhood and the Athenian holidaymakers who know the route well to the corner of Hypsantos with Pericleus will come. Another for a bread, another for a cheese pie, another for a raisin bread. For them is the «Grandpa's oven». Officially, however, the «Margetis Oven»A small, almost hidden shop that still carries the face and story of the man behind the bench.
Και ο Άγγελος Μαργέτης έχει αποφασίσει ότι θα παραμείνει εκεί όσο μπορεί. «Θα συνεχίσω να κάνω τη δουλειά όσο αντέχω και με βοηθάει η υγεία μου και το μυαλό μου».
Ίσως αυτή να είναι και η πραγματική απάντηση στο πώς ένας άνθρωπος 88 ετών εξακολουθεί να ξυπνά καθημερινά στις 4.30 το πρωί για να ανάψει έναν ξυλόφουρνο. Δεν είναι μόνο η συνήθεια. Ούτε η ανάγκη. Είναι ένας έρωτας που κρατά περισσότερο από εξήντα χρόνια.
Και όσο τα χέρια του μπορούν ακόμη να κρατούν το φουρνόφτυαρο και το μυαλό του να μετρά τον χρόνο της φωτιάς, ο «Φούρνος Μαργέτη» ή ο «φούρνος του παππού», όπως τον έχουν βαφτίσει οι Αθηναίοι θα συνεχίζει να θυμίζει σε όσους περνούν την πόρτα του τι γεύση και τι άρωμα είχε κάποτε το πραγματικό ψωμί.
