Change of life: who are the profiles attracted by the bakery?

Solène Leroux 5:06 p.m., December 31, 2021

INTERVIEW

Who has never dreamed of baking their own bread?

If many French people have achieved this dream in 2020 thanks to confinements, others have pushed the envy even further by giving up their job to become a baker.

Thomas Teffri-Chambelland founded the International Bakery School near Sisteron, in the Alpes-de-Haute-Provence, to become a baker.

"We mainly welcome adults in retraining who are generally adults between 30 and 50 years old," he explains at the microphone of Thierry Dagiral in

.

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"People who have well-recognized jobs"

"They often have a very good school or university background and good professional experience", assures the founder, who explains a little more the profile of his students: "Occupations of the type engineers, bankers, graphic designers, therefore people who, in mainstream society, have relatively well-recognized jobs. "

All of them "are bored in their work" but even more so, they "are at a loss of meaning".

They seek both "to invest in a real economy and to find pleasure and meaning in their work".

And this is a general trend: that of finding meaning in what we do on a daily basis.

Biology teacher in another life

In this sense, "it is true that bread is an area that attracts a lot for several reasons", explains Thomas Teffri-Chambelland.

"On the one hand, because bread is highly symbolic in France and on the other hand, because it remains a craft which is viable today."

Indeed, if some people want to change their life, they do not want to give up their usual way of life.

These people "often also have economic requirements, families to support and who live as in the 21st century and not as in the 19th", he still enumerates.

"They want to reorient themselves while ultimately also having the ability to make a living from their work. And bread today allows this reconversion, when it is well done."

>> TO LISTEN - Retraining

 , a way of giving meaning to professional life?

And if he can say so, it is because the founder of the International Bakery School himself converted twenty years ago.

He is now 46 years old, but in the early years of his career he was a professor of biology.

"I was a civil servant at the National Education and I left it to finally follow what was a passion for me: baking."

Since then, the baker "has been working on this sector of organic bread and sourdough bread with several companies".

And with success!