Windhoek's favourite bakery
H
idden behind the unlikely facade of a Puma service station in General Murtala Muhammed Road in Windhoek’s Eros neighbourhood is the city’s most loved artisan bakery. Don’t be fooled by the exterior. As soon as you enter Le Pain Café your senses are bombarded with the smell of fresh bread, pastries and the aroma of freshly made coffee. The popularity of this place has spread quickly through word of mouth, and for good reason. Once you have tasted the delicious baked delicacies like the pecan nut mini pies, various tartlets and old favourites on the shelves like the signature loaf or the peppadew and feta ciabatta, it's hard not to come back for more. While a lot of kids say they want to become firemen or doctors when asked what they want to be when they grow up, the owner and founder of Le Pain Café, Stéphaan Coetzee, seems to have had it all worked out from a young age. “It all started when I was about nine years old and told
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my parents that I want to open a bakery in Paris. I didn’t even know where Paris was at that time,” he explains laughingly. The dream to become a baker never left him and after finishing school he enrolled at the Institute of Culinary Arts in Stellenbosch, South Africa. While studying there the co-owner and co-founder of île de païn bakery in Knysna, Markus Färbinger, gave a talk to the students and Stéphaan was intrigued by what he said about artisan bread. So much so that as part of his course, he secured a three-month internship with Markus at île de païn, and this is where he really fell in love with the whole process of baking and all the intricacies that go with it. After finishing his studies he worked for Markus for about two years, constantly learning and slowly perfecting his craft. After a stint in a pastry department in the UK and then going back to South Africa to work for one of the country’s bestknown chefs, David Higgs, Stéphaan returned to Namibia with the intention to start his own bakery. His dream didn’t
