1/4 Photos: Karin Kamp
Flour, yeast, minced meat, milk, an egg and some herbs. With these ingredients you can make the most popular delicacy in Brabant: the sausage roll. And 13-year-old Djorn van Werde is already so good at it that he has been voted the best amateur baker in the province.
He was recently on stage with four adult bakers at the final of the Tastiest Brabantse Sausage Roll. Only thirteen years old, a small petite man from Heeze, and probably with much less baking experience than his competitors. Still, Djorn managed to take the first prize.
Djorn was inspired by his uncle, who teaches future young bakers all the tricks of the trade as a teacher at Summa College in Eindhoven. In his shed in the backyard in Heeze, he regularly conjures up the tastiest sandwiches, pies, biscuits and cakes from the oven. Kneading, mixing, rising, baking, Djorn – who lives next door to his uncle – regularly watched when he was little, with his nose against the counter.
“I was nine when my uncle asked me if I liked making sausage rolls.”
“I was nine when my uncle asked me if I liked making sausage rolls,” says Djorn. “Well, I wanted to.”
Making the dough, seasoning the minced meat in such a way that the sausage tastes delicious, rolling the sausage into a sandwich, Djorn learned all the techniques and turned out to have real talent. A few years ago, he decided to participate for the first time in the competition in the Best Home Sausage Roll category. He was ten years old, making him one of the youngest participants.
He was not awarded at the time. But now, three years later, he’s even more adept at rolling the perfect round bun, and he was eager to show the judges. “I was confident that I could go far,” he says soberly. The recipe remained the same, ‘a fresh bread roll with tasty minced meat’.
“The oven worked very differently than at home, the sides of the bun didn’t brown.”
Nevertheless, the final, in which all bakers bake on location, was still quite exciting. “My dough was very sticky”, he looks back. “And the oven worked differently than at home, so the sides of the bun didn’t brown.”
“In the end there was a color difference in the first plate I baked and the second, so actually I thought my sausage rolls were a bit underwhelmed.”
Despite the minor flaws, the jury found Djorn’s sausage roll to be the most delicious. There he stood, the best amateur baker in Brabant, with a cup and a bunch of flowers that was almost bigger than himself.
Djorn is still baking in his uncle’s shed. “Every week I make about three hundred and I pass them out to my friends and family,” he says. Yet he is not yet sure whether he really wants to make it his profession. “Then you’re working every night, and that doesn’t sound like anything to me.”
