LEE KYUNGSOON

Since 1997, the fundamentals of making bread have changed very little.

Read the dough. Check its condition. Bake, cut and prepare the next loaf.

Nearly three decades are ultimately made from days like these.

Lee Kyungsoon’s baking has continued through that repetition.

She has not spent all those years repeating one kind of bread.

Baguettes, ciabatta, focaccia, bagels, table breads, and loaves made for sandwiches and café menus.

As the way people eat and the breads they look for change, what she makes changes too.

Even after years of working with bread, she did not stop learning.

Lee Kyungsoon studied bread at Le Cordon Bleu and pastry at Nakamura Academy.

Even for someone with nearly three decades of experience, there was reason to return to study.

What matters more to me than where she studied is the fact that she continues to learn.

Experience has not made her cling to familiar ingredients.

She changes flours and fermentation methods, and tests a better ingredient when she finds one.

Flours from France, Japan and Canada are used differently according to the bread she is making.

She also works with naturally fermented starters and looks for ways to minimize additives.

Experience is not a reason to stop changing. It is a way to judge what each change does.

She began baking in Chuncheon in 1997.

Nearly three decades later, it would be easy to think that her own way of working was already complete.

But she is still looking at new ingredients, new techniques and the changing direction of baking.

She revisits recipes she has made for years when she finds a better way.

Experience has not made her less curious. It has given her more things to compare, question and improve.

She is a baker, but the way she approaches bread often feels closer to a researcher.

She does not keep decades of accumulated technique to herself.

Lee Kyungsoon has quietly continued to teach baking classes and pass on what she has learned.

Some students are making bread for the first time. Others are working through practical menu questions for cafés.

The techniques she learned, tested and revised over nearly three decades continue through other people.

And while she teaches, her own study does not stop.

The baking Lee Kyungsoon began in Chuncheon in 1997 now continues at Fragrance Jeju.

She moved to Jeju around ten years ago.

Here, she makes bread, tests new products and teaches her skills to others.

The region changed, but the path she chose in baking continues.

Bread is not the only thing that comes out of the workspace.

Small baked goods and new products are part of the same process of testing and making.

Meal breads, sandwich breads and breads developed for cafés are all part of the range she has worked on.

The image is an archive of some of the breads made over time, rather than a complete product list.