Claybaker, baker and owner of Marquette Baking Co., Marquette, Mich., left a successful engineering career to open a bakery.
Claybaker, baker and owner of Marquette Baking Co., Marquette, Mich., left a successful engineering career to open a bakery.
How did you get your start in baking?
My journey in baking started 19 years ago when a coworker gave me a sourdough culture — the same one I am using today. I started playing around with it at home and, through trial and error, started baking some reasonably good bread. The local natural food cooperative had a bakery in the back, and shortly after I started baking all my own bread at home, I started volunteering a couple mornings a week at the bakery. I would work at the bakery from 4 to 7:30 a.m., and then go to my day job at a supercomputer manufacturer.
What led to the career change?
My early experience at the bakery in the back of the food cooperative really lit an interest that never left me. Production baking just felt right to me; I don't know how else to explain it — a calling, maybe. I had the opportunity to take a one-day class with Didier Rosada. I walked away with pages and pages of notes, and a humbling realization that I had a lot more to learn.
But it was when I got married and moved to Marquette that things started tipping in the direction of baking. Marquette is a wonderful place, but there wasn't any engineering work in town of the type I enjoyed doing. I decided if I didn't start baking, I was never going to do it and I'd probably regret never trying it. It was when my first son was a toddler and my incredibly understanding and supportive wife was pregnant with our second, that I left Marquette for two weeks of classes at the San Francisco Baking Institute. I started to refine the baking I had been doing at home, and started to learn how to do it on a much larger scale.
I joined the Bread Bakers Guild of America and started reading its online forum when I found an answer. There was a whole group of bakers out there who were baking for farmers' markets, and some of them were renting commercial kitchens to do their production. Marquette has a farmers' market, so if I could find a kitchen to rent, I could test out the market with a minimal investment. I found a shop that baked Cornish pasties that would rent me their kitchen after-hours. I baked through the night and showed up at the market with 60 ugly loaves of bread (things didn't go very well the first night), a few baskets and a chalkboard I borrowed from my son. There was enough curiosity for the 60 loaves to sell in a couple hours. The next week, the fun really started. Everyone that bought a loaf the first week came back and bought two or three, raving about the one they bought the week before. And then the next week people were lining up early so they'd be sure to get a loaf before I ran out. It only took a few weeks before I knew I would be able make a bakery work.
Do you use engineering skills in baking?
They are actually surprisingly similar. With the exception of graduate school, my entire engineering career has been involved in design and manufacturing, i.e. figuring out how to make something, and then working to increase efficiency and reduce defects. Running a profitable bakery is essentially the same thing — we just happen to use a lot more hand labor than most of the manufacturing lines I used to work with. Also, the analytical skills and knowledge of physics, biology and chemistry are helpful in understanding the microorganisms, chemicals, enzyme activity and heat transfer involved in baking.
Also, my background has helped in working with all the math involved in developing formulas, working with preferments and maintaining starters. My experience in designing, diagnosing and servicing manufacturing equipment means that I don't have to call for outside service. That's especially important since Marquette is so far off the beaten path.
What were your goals for the bakery's design?
The space we are using had been a wholesale bakery, but the only things I carried over were the existing flues and ventilation ducts. Everything else was from scratch.
My goal for the bakery was to have a space with as little separation between the bakers and the customers as possible. The main shaping bench is a little more than 10 ft. from where the customers stand at the front counter, and the deck oven is in full view a little further away. The arrangement does cause the occasional traffic jam in front of the oven, but no one has been stabbed with a peel handle yet, and I love being able to talk to the customers while I am shaping.
What's unique about Marquette, Mich., and who are your customers?
Marquette is a wonderful place to live and work. Most of the people that live here do so because they want to live here, and then find a way to make it happen. It's a small town of about 20,000 people, but with Northern Michigan University and a large medical center located here, it has a vibrancy that many similarly sized towns lack. It is a very walkable town, and people tend to be physically active and care about the quality of what they eat.
Many of my customers are just people that love good bread and pastries, but many others come with specific interests. There are many that are looking for whole grain, natural or specialty grain products. The ethnic background of the Upper Peninsula of Michigan tends to be Finnish, Cornish, Italian and Irish, and there is a lot of interest in authentic products from those heritages. Many come for the products that match their specific ethnic heritage, such as saffron buns for the Cornish, cardamom bread for the Finnish, soda bread for the Irish and so on. We rotate those products on a monthly basis. We also are located next to a children's museum, so we get a lot of children and parents that just want a cookie. I enjoy finding excuses to make a lot of unique, once-a-year products. It keeps things interesting in the back of house and for the customers too.
What are your plans for the future?
I just want to continue to add to the customer base. There is still a lot of room for increased production with the space and equipment we have. When I started the bakery, I did so with a lot of well-used equipment, benches, etc. I'm glad I did because it kept the debt load much lower than most start-up bakeries. I'm looking at upgrading some of the benches and storage to make the bakery a nicer place to work and an easier place to keep clean.
What are you doing when you aren't baking?
Sleeping. Just joking…sort of. I have a wife and two young boys that I love to spend time with and watch grow. My wife and I are both running small business start-ups, and just having enough time to manage the household and care for the kids is a challenge. I enjoy cooking at home, and still do a surprising amount of baking — pizza, cornbread to go with chili, cupcakes for treats at school — that sort of thing. Also, Marquette is a wonderful place to live for someone who loves the outdoors. I'll take the kids “adventuring” to local waterfalls, beaches or other points of interest. I enjoy riding bikes, running, snowshoeing and just walking around downtown doing errands.
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You keep a monthly blog alerting people to seasonal or holiday items. How has that worked?
I try to update my blog every week or two, but sometimes it does get to be a long time between updates. In addition to promoting the business, I use the blog to educate and give people an insight into what goes on behind the scenes. I try to write something that I would find interesting.
The blog has been very successful. Without doing anything more than having a sign-up sheet on the front counter, more than 350 people are getting my blog e-mailed to them every time I post. And I see a bump in sales every time I post. I limit myself to posting no more than once a week so people don't start treating it like spam.
How else have you reached out to consumers?
There are a lot of benefit dinners and such that need my support. Just this morning I gave a couple dozen cookies to a local cause that I believe in.
I have given school groups tours of the bakery. And if the group is manageable enough and the timing is right, I'll set the kids up with dough and show them how to shape it so they can have their own loaves of bread to take home.
I am occasionally invited to do presentations on baking for interested groups. It's educational and gives me some additional exposure. The last talk I gave ended up as a front-page story in the local paper. It's one of the benefits of living in a small town.
Then there are the more usual forms of advertising, such as newspapers and public radio sponsorship, for instance. In truth, just being available in the shop to talk to customers, or smile and wave give people a connection to the bakery and keeps them coming back.