The rediscovered trading system and conscious food projects are both hot topics in Berlin. Unexpectedly, Malin Elmlid created an exceptional example in which she combines both: The Bread Exchange. Typical for Berlin, this project is not about money but touches upon different values: trust, quality and consciousness. Bread is a global good, not bound by any borders and something to be shared.
 

Malin started The Bread Exchange in 2009. Frustrated about not being able find good white bread in Berlin, she started first researching and then baking from her Berlin apartment and during travels white yeast-free sourdough bread herself. ‘A good bread only needs three ingredients. Flour, water and salt. With only 3 ingredients it is crucial that they are the best quality. Then there is no need for yeast or other things to boost the bread, the only thing you need is time.’
 

Malin trades this unique bread – that takes more than twenty-four hours to bake – with people for things that they can do better than she does. Think: a special honey from your hometown, offering culinary products, guitar lessons, travel accommodation, bike-repair vouchers or for example 2kg of quinces from your grannies garden. Malin: ‘what I see is an interest to get stories and find some kind of value in what we eat because there isn’t if we buy it from the supermarket. Things just taste better if we know where they are from.’

Since The Bread Exchange started, Malin traded over 1,400 sourdoughs worldwide, places of trade range from the USA to Belgium and from her hometown Berlin to places like Marocco and even Afghanistan.
 

For ‘Bread Exchange’, the book documenting Malin’s stories and travels set to be published October 2014, Malin used the same procedure: the majority of production, photography and travels was done through trading as well.
 

Arthur Groeneveld

thebreadexchange.com

A Guy Named Arturo, the alias of Amsterdam/Berlin-based creative consultant Arthur Groeneveld (1986), is an interdisciplinary one-man-show offering brand support, communications, art direction, trend forecasting, and creative research. 
 

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