Building Bread, Ovens and Community at Weaver Street Market

Summary

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One bread effect I didn't anticipate was the passionate community that grew up around us at the bakery. For one thing, when we opened, our bread oven was barely an arm's length from the retail counter, and customers loved to share their appreciation and tell their own bread stories-what they grew up eating in the old neighborhood or the old country, why the crust was too dark or not dark enough, a particular bread they had in Italy, etc Also, since bread is not something you stock up on, customers came by three or four times a week, usually on a regular schedule, so we were on a first-name basis with many of them. There were the "early adopters" who experienced an epiphany similar to a first taste of exceptional fee cream or chocolate or coffee, and there were the transplanted cosmopolitans who were tempted to stop complaining that the food was always better wherever they had moved from-usually New York or Europe.

In olden days, when good ovens that would stay hot were harder to come by, folks would bring their dough to the local oven to bake the bread that would sustain them all week. Each family's loaf was cut with an identifying mark as the oven was filled. The oven was a center of village life-the heart or hearth of the community. Even now, when bread bakers get together, one of the first questions is always "What oven are you using?" The oven is key and is one reason why homebaked bread will never duplicate what a skilled baker can get from a $20,000/20-ton stone deck oven.

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Building Bread, Ovens and Community at Weaver Street Market

In 1990, I left my desk job to become a bread baker. Not that I was an expert, although I'd spent plenty of time in restaurant kitchens and traveled in Europe and San Francisco enough to know what I was looking for-and that we didn't have anything lik...

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