"One of our Canadian friends found a package of hamburger buns underneath his car seat three months after purchasing them, and all of them were still soft…" - began her story Irina . What does this tell you? The most of the breads and bakery products we can find in stores today contain an immense number of chemicals and preservatives.

Irina and Slava Kuzmin are the owners of Cosmo Bakery (#106 - 358 East Kent Ave. South, 604-324-2833), a huge industrial producer of baked goods. It is located near Superstore-intersection of Marine Drive and Main St. The owners are convinced that buying an existing business is the most secure way of starting your own business, and then by carefully working with the existing clients, one can introduce new things. When Irina and Slava bought the bakery in 2002, it specialized strictly on supplying continental breakfast to the nearby hotels.

In four years, the assortment of products changed greatly: the shelves now contain cakes, cookies, and puff pastry products with potatoes, mushrooms, feta cheese, spinach, apples and blackberries. The owners have also mastered a new skill - making of specialty breads. Now they make breads with raisins, cranberries, pecans and walnuts, as well as, offer the public seven grain breads with pumpkin seeds, white and rye loafs. Most of the breads are 1.2 kg each in weight and are priced at a very reasonable $6 per loaf.

Mr. and Mrs. Kuzmin have mastered a lot of unique recipes, for example, all of their breads are not made on commercial yeast, but are mixed using an ancient method of fermentation. The flour used is mostly bran flour or durum flour-same kind used in production of pasta. This magic recipe is kept over centuries and is passed from generation to generation.

Cosmo Bakery products do not contain any preservatives except organic enzymes. This is the reason to why this kind of bread, unlike the one you buy in the store, can only last no more than five days. The best way to keep it is sliced in the fridge, for it can be defrosted quite fast and if you put in the toaster, the loss of taste, comparing to freshly baked bread, is minimal. The company's slogan is "You are what you eat. Eat right, be healthy".

Besides cakes and breads, one can buy specialty raw cookies that are made through a special dehydrating process that allows to preserve the food's living enzymes. There are also power cookies, which contain up to 1000 calories per 280 gram! These are the absolute favourites of sport and fitness clubs, among which is the Body Energy Club in the center of Downtown Vancouver.

A Napoleon cake is served to me, they cut a piece. "Wow! This is truly something out of this world!-I exclaim.-What kind of milk do you add?" The owner smiles and tells me that all of her products are made without any kind of milk products. She doesn't use milk, cream or sour cream, yet reaches superb quality and taste. This is amazing, yet still a fact: her Napoleon tastes even better than the regular one. All cakes are milk-free, so they are absolutely safe for those that are lactose-intolerant.

Irina and Slava's bakery is an industrial business that has over thirty five customers that buy in bulk. There are five-star hotels, supermarkets and individuals among the clients. Irina says that at times, the earnings from sales to individuals tops all hopes and forecasts.

The owners reminisce about the busiest of times when they served the Indy Car Auto racing that took place in Vancouver during 2001, 2002, 2003 and 2004. During the event, Irina and Slava were the main providers of baked products, so had to work night and day in order to provide the athletes and spectators with pastries and cakes.

One of the new triumphs for the bakery is the fact that it obtained the license for production of kosher food, so now they make Parve challa bread, strudels, bourekas, kishes and other kosher products.

I returned home with a loaf of artisan walnut-cranberry rye bread, dreaming about the sandwich that I'll enjoy. My wife tried a piece, and without letting me finish my story, said: "Please, make sure we always have a constant supply of this bread in the fridge!"