Changebaker: Francois de Halleux of Origo Bakery
A Google alumnus with a passion for the environment, Francois de Halleux is determined to make a difference through sustainably-produced sourdough bread. He’s got plenty of stories to tell.
In 2009, Francois de Halleux made the unusual decision of traveling across the world without ever boarding a plane. After a three-year stint at Google, Francois booked a one-way ticket to Sydney, making a rule to reach Europe only by bunking on cargo ships or taking day-long journeys overland. For the travel enthusiast, it was a dream fulfilled. It also served as a wake-up call, seeing the amount of environmental disasters across borders.
De Halleux, who was born in a small village near Brussels, has always had a connection to the environment. As a child, he would spend his weekends in a way most kids today wouldn't; at the crack of dawn, he’d scurry to the neighborhood’s farmers, carrying out tasks as he enjoyed his time amongst nature and animals.
Although he would in fact return to the tech giant for another seven years, two forces would send him on a new path to Barcelona: that unwavering concern for the environment, and love. Today he’s found a home in the Spanish metropolis, making a dent in the sustainability sector through another unusual way —- baking sourdough bread at Origo. Literally translating to ‘origins,’ Origo is a small, idyllic bakery in Gràcia that prides itself on its exclusive use of ancient grains. You can taste the difference: it’s good bread.
ON BEGINNINGS
Did you always know that you were going to get into something related to the environment? I’m curious to know what led to your career at Google.
I definitely did not always know. When I was a kid, I wanted to be a farmer, because I loved being on my neighbor's farm and being outside. I also always enjoyed cooking and I wanted to do something related to hospitality. I found a hospitality school teaching culinary arts in Switzerland. That was like my dream. But it was a really expensive private school, so I did not find a way to go. In the end that dream didn’t happen. I studied Business just to keep my options open.
At the end of my studies, I still didn’t really know what to do. Most people went into consulting or banking and I did some of these interviews, but I was not inspired at all. As a teenager, I was geeky, building websites for companies and all, so I thought, what if I work in a tech company? That would be really cool. I was really excited by the potential of tech to reach lots of people. It was kind of the beginning of everything back then, so my dream companies were Yahoo and Google. It worked out with Google, they invited me for an interview and I thought, yeah, this is cool. This, I'm really excited about. So I let go of the banking and consulting side and joined them.
Wow! What was it like at Google? You were there for ten years, right?
I was there for ten years. In the beginning, it was a bit brutal. I started at, really, the lowest ladder possible at Google: Operations. I envisioned having a super cool job from the very beginning, but my first job was pretty boring, super repetitive, very operational. I was a bit disillusioned even though the work environment was amazing.
FRANCOIS AT GOOGLE. PHOTO: FRANCOIS DE HALLEUX
After three years at Google, during one of my holiday trips, I went to Israel with some friends. I met a guy at our hostel who had been to Australia and lost his plane ticket. This was a story that happened a long time ago. Back then, if you’d lost your ticket, you were stuck. He decided to travel back and get closer to London little by little. He took a boat to leave Australia and told me all of these stories. I talked all night with that guy. I was super fascinated for a while after that, I thought, “this is like a dream trip, taking a flight to Australia and coming back home overland!” So it became my goal. I really wanted to travel, but I wanted some rules, like: okay, I’m not going to visit all of the highlights of the world and take one plane after the other. I kind of wanted to limit myself in some ways. That’s what I did: I booked a one-way flight to Sydney, and my rule was to come back home without taking a flight. Everything except airplanes.
That’s so cool. How did that go?
It was amazing, traveling overland. I left Australia and took a cargo ship to Singapore, and then I went through Indonesia, Malaysia, Thailand, Cambodia, and Vietnam. Then I arrived in China and crossed the whole of it to get through Central Asia and then Europe. It took me close to a year to come back. You can see the cultures changing gradually. I really enjoyed it.
And you returned to Google after that trip.
I left Google not knowing at all what i would do afterwards —— I wanted to keep all the options open. When I came back, I was thinking of maybe doing my own business already. But I had only worked three years and was at the end of my savings. One former colleague at Google was trying to hire in the Marketing team, which, when I was in Operations, was a team you would look up to. I thought it would be a really good opportunity. So that’s how I rejoined Google. The program I was in allowed you to do two locations. The first one was in Brussels and the second one was Mountain view in California, where I stayed afterwards.
That’s super interesting because, how did you go from this Marketing-Tech role, and into setting up your own business in Barcelona?
Yeah (laughs). So, lots of stories that happened along the way. As I told you, I always had this connection to nature and the environment and as I traveled, that concern kept growing and I thought, tech is great, but tech will be okay. There are so many bright young people in tech and it will continue to advance, but I felt like the environmental movement really needed help. I thought I could be more useful trying to bring the little I could contribute to that problem. That idea was growing in my mind more and more, but I was also really enjoying Google. I ended up switching from Marketing to Product Management for Google Photos. Since I always enjoyed photography, it was a great job. It was hard to leave!
“I THOUGHT, TECH IS GREAT, BUT TECH WILL BE OKAY. THERE ARE SO MANY BRIGHT YOUNG PEOPLE IN TECH AND IT WILL CONTINUE TO ADVANCE, BUT I FELT LIKE THE ENVIRONMENTAL MOVEMENT REALLY NEEDED HELP.”
But what happened is that I met my wife, Rocio. We were friends back in Dublin, but by some coincidence, we re-met in San Francisco. And, actually, we went to the Philippines together! That’s where we started dating, so the Philippines is really important to both of us (laughs). We have so many good memories there. We got along super well, and decided to see each other again. That year we did a few trips together because she was based in Madrid and I was in San Francisco. We decided that we could do it for a year at most, but we needed to meet in one city after.
What happened after?
We decided to both leave our jobs and envisioned a list of cities in the world to live in. We settled on Barcelona, Berlin, and Bangkok —— very diverse! We tried Bangkok out for a month and a half, but we both wanted to do something in sustainability and we thought, you know, this place is great, there’s a lot of opportunities for startups, it’s a great hub for traveling and all of that, but we didn’t see ourselves living there at that point.
We decided to come back to Europe while we were searching for opportunities. It was in the middle of the winter so we said, let’s go to Barcelona, and search for opportunities from there. Then Rocio found a position in a sustainability startup [in Barcelona], so it became pretty clear that we would stay.
Not a bad place to be.
No, no, it’s super good. We never regret it. It’s an amazing city. It combines a lot of things we like, so we’re very happy here.
I continued to search for opportunities related to sustainability in Barcelona. I always loved cooking so I thought it would be amazing if I could find something that could put food and sustainability together.
AT ORIGO: FRESH LOAVES, ALWAYS. PHOTO: MARIA ASTRAND, BCN FOOD EXPERIENCE
ON CURIOUS MIDDLES
So, bread! What was it about bread, in particular, that you grew so passionate about, rather than other sustainability occupations?
I’d never been such a big bread fan until I lived in San Francisco and I’d discovered the bread from Tartine bakery. They make this amazing sourdough bread. I'd never really gotten the hype about sourdough bread until I tried out their bread with my brother. I had tried sourdough bread before, but very often, it was really acidic and very dense. Tartine bread blew my mind and it's been the reference bread I've had in my mind ever since.
I didn’t realize that I was very lucky to have such a special bakery like Tartine next to me in San Francisco until I arrived in Barcelona and tried to find the same bread. I tried some of the recommended bakeries out, but I found their bread to be dry and tasteless. Not at all what I was looking for. So I started making my own bread at home. I bought a book called Tartine Bread and started learning how to make my own bread in the Airbnb we’d been renting. It’s very simple, you don’t need that much. A bowl, scale,...the one little investment I had to make was a Dutch oven. It’s more about the process rather than buying materials.
Did you think that it would lead you to a full-fledged business?
I didn’t think this would lead me anywhere; it was more like a hobby in the beginning. But at the same time, I was thinking of this business idea… Maybe, if I’d been looking for a bread like that, then there might be an opportunity! I began to think about it, and while researching, I discovered a whole movement, especially in France, where farmers try to rediscover ancient varieties of wheats. It was fascinating to me. I decided it would be great to go in that direction, combining rediscovering ancient wheats with the Tartine style of making bread and trying that out.
What exactly are ancient grains? How are they different from the generic wheat we’re used to?
Like most food, wheat has been standardized and has lost a lot of its flavor. It has completely changed since the ‘60’s. During the Green Revolution, people started to use lots of pesticides and synthetic fertilizers. Ancient wheat varieties were selected to grow without those. When you add a lot of fertilizers to ancient varieties, the wheat grows so much that it just falls down. Another difference is that ancient wheat varieties used to need very deep roots to go all the way down into the soil to get all the nutrients, but that’s not needed anymore with the use of synthetic fertilizers. Modern varieties now are much shorter plants with roots that don’t go as deep since there's plenty of fertilizer on the surface.
And do a lot of farmers today use these ancient grains?
Oh, no. Today, maybe 99.5% of the wheat produced uses modern varieties. Modern Agriculture uses a lot of pesticides, a lot of fertilizers, and modern varieties. Ancient varieties are pretty rare. There are some varieties that are a little more famous, like spelt. So no, I think it’s still really the beginning of the movement. It’s really minimal.
Kind of like going backwards in a way?
Exactly. I think modern agriculture was great at the time, we discovered a very powerful tool that made growing everything easier, like oh, we can just add synthetic fertilizer and pesticides to get rid of the bugs and all! But then bugs became more resistant, so you have to keep adding more pesticides. Soil becomes depleted so you need to add more fertilizers and it becomes this vicious circle... Now, we understand all the problems that come from that. We urgently need to rethink agriculture to avoid environmental disasters... Permaculture is actually way more complex and sophisticated. 'Modern' agriculture neglects a lot of the subtleties that nature is all about.
You mentioned that you were looking at some bakeries in France. I read somewhere that you worked in a bakery in Paris, is that correct?
Yeah. At home, I learned how to make one good bread. The next step was learning how to make a lot of bread, for a bakery. This, I had no idea how to do. Basically, from this ancient wheat movement in France, I identified bakers that were most inspiring to me. One of them was Maxime from Le Bricheton in Paris, which I thought was cool because it was in an urban setting and they used only ancient varieties and they were mixing all their doughs by hand, they really are going back to the basics of bread. I asked the owner if I could work for free for a while and he said, sure!
HANDMADE. PHOTO: MARIA ASTRAND
How long did it take for you to master this process or practice?
That’s the crazy thing. It's the simplest way to make bread, but it’s also the most complicated. You’re dealing with live organisms, so they’re not as predictable as commercially-bred yeast. You need to learn to read the dough. It’s a process that takes a long time and I honestly still wouldn't say that I’ve mastered it. I’m in the learning process of getting to mastery. Baking with sourdough requires some kind of humility, because you never control it 100%.
It’s one thing to be a consumer of good bread, and another to make it. What were some of the most interesting things you learned about what “good” bread actually is supposed to be?
I try to not eat yeast bread. Sourdough is the minimum I would ask to consume, the problem is that it’s not very regulated. People can say a bread is sourdough, when in reality it is not. You can just add a bit of sourdough culture then add yeast so that the fermentation is much faster and call it sourdough bread. In Spain, there are bakeries that sell pan de Masa Madre (Spanish for sourdough), and a lot of them will tell you, “yes, yes, this is all sourdough!” but it can just mean that they add a bit of sourdough. There are even companies that sell you powder to give that sourdough flavor to your dough. So to identify if it's a true sourdough, you need to ask the bakery if they also add yeast in their bread or not. A true sourdough bread doesn't have any yeast in it!
There are a lot of things to watch out for when you buy bread and there are definitely very, very big differences that you can make in a few hours. Sourdough is a 36-hour process. You can go for this, or you can buy baguettes that have been fermented for one hour. There’s a big difference! It has a real impact on your health, for sure. There’s the whole aspect of where the wheat comes from, and that’s another thing, still. It also has a big impact on the environment.
“THERE ARE A LOT OF REASONS BEHIND [PREMIUMS]... IF YOU DESTROY SOMETHING, SOMEHOW, THE CONSEQUENCES OF THAT SHOULD BE PAID FOR.”
IDYLLIC ORIGO. PHOTO: MARIA ASTRAND
Very true.
To me it’s interesting that these two things are very related, you know? One of the guys I spent a lot of time with in France has a nutritionist working for him and does a lot of nutrition studies on his wheats.
While conducting their analysis, they found that the ancient wheat varieties that they are growing are off the charts in terms of nutrients. All the types of vitamins, minerals, amino acids… are way higher with ancient varieties that have been grown in healthy soil. These two things are really linked. And at times we forget about that - we look at price: "Wow! There’s a big difference". But there are the environmental costs that are generated which are not taken into account.. If you destroy something, somehow, the consequences of that should be paid for. And then there are the health costs of eating nutritionally poor bread that was not fermented properly. If you factor in these costs, then a healthy sourdough bread is actually way cheaper!
ON RUNNING A BAKERY
What's one thing people should know when setting up a bakery?
That it’s possible to do it in different ways. Maybe you can look at the current model and look at it critically. Not all the investment of a typical bakery is needed, at least not from the very beginning. We started by making just three types of bread. That was a nice way to start: little by little. We started adding other things along the way as we could. The high initial investment for starting a bakery is preventing a lot of cool new bakeries projects from existing. Because if you look at the typical business model for bakeries, it scares a lot of people out! But you can start a minimalistic bakery, open only a few hours a week for example, there are other alternatives to the current model!
And what’s one thing you wish you knew before you opened up?
What I wish I knew is that in Barcelona, not a lot of people were looking for the type of bread I had in mind. This depends on the culture and country. Sourdough, at least in some cities, is becoming really known, and people are starting to look for it. But in some other places, it hasn’t arrived yet. In Barcelona it was kind of early, so I noticed that I struggled more than I had imagined I would. I had a lot of education to do, explaining why it is better, and convincing clients little by little.
Yes —— it’s so integrated into the Spanish culture to have a baguette. You’re one of those pioneering the movement in Barcelona.
Sourdough bread is very similar to coffee. In the beginning you might see specialty coffee and think, ‘wow, why is this more expensive? I don’t understand the difference!’ But as you develop your palate and start researching more about the subject, once you make the switch, it’s really hard to go back to instant coffee or the over-roasted coffee you’d been drinking before.
What does a typical day for you work like now?
This has been changing a lot over the last months. I used to spend 100% of my time in bread production until I realized that I was really needed in running the business and solving the problems. When you’re into bread production, you cannot think about anything else because you need to be focused. I started struggling with that as Origo grew. I still do bread production full-time, one day a week, and everyday I participate a little in the process, but I’m in this role where I’m trying to solve all the different problems that come up and making sure that the bakery is well-run, that all the ingredients are always ready, all the products are always in stock, the administrative things are what I spend most of my time on now. But ideally, I would like to find balance between production and doing admin tasks. ♦