"Industry Espionage" Tour in the Sernf Valley: Glarner Feingebäck Bakery

(This post published on September 23, 2024)

Wednesday February 5, 2014 -- We spent the morning at the Glarner Feingebäck Factory in the Sernf Valley near Glarus, which is a bakery (employs 30 people) that makes specialty pastries on request, and is one of only a few, if not the only bakery in Switzerland that bakes kosher products. The history and explanation of the works and the tour as well were very interesting, and of course we got to have coffee and cookies too! (Tours were offered for free at a variety of industries in this region, to promote knowledge of the history of industry in Canton Glarus. We could also have had a tour of a weaving factory, for example, but this was the tour available on Wednesday, Urs' day off).

After the tour we took the bus to the end of the Sernf Valley to a town called Elm, but it was very cold and windy with low clouds, and not a single restaurant open. So we just had our picnic lunch at the old train station while waiting for the bus. (Wednesday was "rest day").

In Elm there is a very special hole in the mountain called the Martin's Loch (Martin's hole), a 15m diameter hole through which the sun shines for a couple of minutes directly on the church tower, on only 4 days each year (March and September). After that the sun disappears again and rises 15 minutes later above the mountains.

Here is a time-lapse video someone took of the sun shining through the Martin's Hole: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=27yGfqGPpm4

An ugly day for an outing, but we are going to get a free tour of the Glarner Feingebäck bakery in Engi in the Sernf Valley, so worth a trip anyway. 

First we all were ushered into the meeting room for coffee and cookies and an introductory explanation of the history of the bakery and its operations.

We all had to put on special hair nets and coats to prevent contamination. 

Production area

This is where the handmade chocolates get made. 

The chocolates are all made by hand. A large variety of chocolate slabs are produced like this. There is a real science to how this is done, especially temperature and consistency. 

Yumm, we all got to try the dark chocolate and hazelnut chunks. 

These pastries are called Beignets, and it is all done by hand!

VIDEO:

The production of the beignets, all done by hand.

Packing the beignets (or that is what they called them)

Then we moved on to the production of the popular "Birnenbrot", a pastry with a filling of dried pears. 

Birnenbrot, ready to be packaged

VIDEO:

Packaging of the Birnenbrot 

After the tour of the Bakery, we got on a bus (in front of the building) and took a ride up valley to the town of Elm, where we had hoped to look around at the pretty houses for a bit, but it was so icy cold, and visibility was poor, so we just sat in the waiting room in the former train station there (there was a train line in this valley from 1905 to 1969) and ate our lunch, while waiting for the next bus to take us back out of the valley. 

Waiting at the bus stop across from the Glarner Bakery in Engi, for a bus to the back of the valley. The weather there does not look inviting, but we figured, since we are already here, let's go have a look. 

Some nice houses in Elm. We don't see much of the mountainous backdrop, though.

Walking near the church in Elm

Past those houses to the mountains in the back is where the Tschingelhorn range with the Martin's hole is supposed to be. 

We would have liked to at least have lunch in a restaurant while here, but it looks like Wednesday is the day off for restaurants in Elm in winter, so we sat at the former train station (train line is no longer in operation) and ate the sandwiches we brought along, waiting for the next bus out of the valley.