Iowa may not be known as a foodie heaven, but in the midst of the corn and soybean fields is New Pioneer Food Co-op with a focus on natural, wholesome foods, and its bakery is no exception.

“We’re the hippie version of Whole Foods,” jokes Craig Albright, food production coordinator for New Pioneer’s two locations in Iowa City and Coralville. With a major university located in Iowa City, area residents tend to be college educated and upper middle class–ideal demographics for an all natural grocery and bakehouse.

The co-op began as a bulk food grocery in 1971 in Iowa City, but it wasn’t until 1994 that the co-op added a bakehouse to produce hearth-baked breads. Pastry items were added as part of the deli 13 years ago, becoming its own department in 2003. In 2004, the entire store, including the bakehouse, removed all hydrogenated fats from its products. Almost all the bakery’s items, about 90 percent, use organic flour and other organic ingredients. The bakehouse also offers vegan products, as well as a wheat-free product line.

“Instead of saying we have glutenfree products, we refer to them as no wheat. We can’t guarantee that they are gluten-free since we have flour everywhere; we do handle those products carefully,” Albright says. Requests for no refined sugar, no eggs or no dairy products also can be fulfilled.

Unlike most in-store bakeries, the bakehouse at New Pioneer has had to carve out display space as bakery products grew in number and sales.

“Bakery is spread throughout the store,” Albright says. “We were kind of an afterthought. When they were designing the [Coralville] store, this department wasn’t the monster it is now. So, we’ve had to stick stuff wherever we could.”

As a result, almost all bakery items are self-serve with a variety of products in single-serve packaging. The only service items are whole cakes, and even these items Albright would like to make self-serve as a convenience to the customers. “Our cake slices used to be a service item, but our sales ballooned when we had the slices packaged and ready to go,” Albright says.

The bakery’s two locations rake in $1.6 million annually, accounting for almost 7 percent of total store sales. With such high numbers, New Pioneer is the second-largest co-op bakery in the nation, and it often serves as a training ground for other co-ops that want to start or improve their own bakehouses. “At least three different co-ops sent their staffs here,” Albright says.

Beginnings of a bakehouse

The germ of the bakery began in the early ’90s when former general manager Rochelle Prunty wanted to bring “good bread” to Iowa. Zingerman’s in Ann Arbor, Mich., had inspired her, and a membership survey suggested that the co-op’s member-owners would support fresh-baked breads.

The original bakery manager, Rebecca Bergus, trained at Rock Hill Bakehouse, Albany, N.Y., and returned armed with formulas and 10 lbs. of raw dough culture. The bakehouse centers on its 8-ton, three-deck hearth oven, which has 225 sq. ft. of baking surface and holds 100 to 200 loaves.

In 2001, when the Coralville location opened, the bakehouse (and oven) was moved to the new store, and the bread program was completely revamped.

“We’d had a bread program for years, but we dropped the old starters and started our own stuff,” Albright says. Then, in 2006, the pastry department, which had a small production space in the Iowa City store, moved into the production space at Coralville, combining the bread and pastry programs into the bakehouse.

All scratch production

All products are made from scratch, using natural ingredients and organic when possible. The breads are produced from a variety of preferments, such as starters, poolish, bigas or levains to create 12 basic doughs. From those, 28 varieties of bread are produced. On any given day, 12 to 18 different loaves are available.

Whole cakes, tarts and cupcakes are the only items in a service case. All other products are packaged as self-serve.

At 2:30 a.m., bakers begin mixing the day’s doughs. At 5:30 a team of four to five employees comes in to hand divide and shape the loaves. The loaves are proofed from 45 minutes to 3½ hours depending on the variety. Then, they are baked at 400°F in the hearth oven. Varieties include cracked wheat farm, challah, ciabatta, Parmesan pepper, Italian potato, focaccia, Greek olive and jalapeño cheddar. All breads have a 24-hour shelf life. At 10:30, the bread team begins prepping the starters for the next day’s production. Bread makes up 3.3 percent of total store sales.

Bread production runs until 2 p.m., and then pastry takes over. However, two pastry crew members come in at 4 a.m. to begin making breakfast items, such as scones, muffins and cookies. The main pastry crew of four comes in the afternoon to make up the rest of the product line.

Pastry production wraps up around 10 p.m. As with the bread, pastry items are made from scratch using natural ingredients. The only exceptions are croissants and Danish, which are produced from frozen dough because the bakehouse doesn’t have space for a sheeter. Products are baked in a singlerack oven. Pastry makes of 3.5 percent of total store sales.

Pastry items include about two dozen varieties of bars, such as monster, banana and peanut butter bars, tarts, cheesecakes and cakes, with about eight varieties offered as slices daily. Most cake varieties are baked every one to two days, even though they have a four-day shelf life.

“We have the reputation of having the best cakes in town. Our chocolate mousse cake is our signature item,” Albright says. “It is a major draw. People who wouldn’t normally shop at the co-op come to just to get one of those.”

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