I first tasted Magnolia Bread Co.'s fresh take on the mixture of flour, yeast, water and salt while eating a superfresh sandwich at Dynamic Dish on Edgewood Avenue, a local lunch haven for veggie lovers. It was a fresh, whole-wheat multigrain bread that sandwiched buttery brie and slices of fresh pear, and was remarkable. I mean literally remarkable: I gasped with glee to my tablemates that it was quite possibly the best sandwich bread I had ever eaten — soft and billowy, but with a toothsome chew that held up nicely against the sandwich's innards.
It's amazing how hard it is to find really well-made bread. Gee, humans have only been making the stuff since prehistoric times. From the first discovery that a mash of grains set aside for a few days would ferment and make an unleavened flat bread lighter, softer and thicker, to the refinement of flour with bromation, bleach and other chemicals, you'd think we might have gotten it right by now. But it took an American grass-roots movement, headed by great bread bakers such as Peter Reinhart at Johnson & Wales University Charlotte and food writer Maggie Glezer, to get us back to the heart of what great artisanal baking is all about: natural flours, yeasts and sours, water and salt, and the gentle hands to form them into dough.
Dianne Reinhardt, Magnolia's owner, baker and chief cook and bottle washer, must have heard the call, even though at the time — five years ago — she was an emergency room nurse. While dealing with the kind of challenging moments an ER nurse encounters, she dreamed of building her own wood-burning oven one day. She dreamed of baking bread as a part-time hobby.
One night, her dreams were forced into reality. "A man came in and was diagnosed with something life-changing and incurable," Reinhardt explains. "He and his wife had done everything right — worked hard, saved appropriately, put children through college.
"Finally, they were going to do what they wanted to do. But once he was diagnosed, they realized that was never going to happen."
Reinhardt stopped dreaming and started building her oven, at first with plans for a "smallish" version that quickly turned into a large 8-by-11-foot one. She did everything from design to "grunt labor." It took more than two years for her to complete it, plus all her savings.
Then she went to "bread school," studying with master baker Jeffrey Hamelman of King Arthur Flour. At first she made loaves and took them to the ER to give away to nurses. (Her program, Feed the Nurses, gives free loaves of bread to hospital workers.) But after a year, it became obvious that she couldn't continue doing both.
She hired a partner and second baker, Matthew Little, who has been baking with her for three years. The two have whittled out a market for themselves with two outstanding features: Their bakery is organic (even the oven is fueled by scrap lumber and their delivery van is fueled by vegetable oil) and their bread is very, very good — from ciabatta to crusty, hole-pocked sourdough. They bake with all-natural ingredients, use sour starters for most of the breads and allow their doughs to retard — slowly ferment — for a couple of days before punching them down and forming them into loaves.
Magnolia Bread Co. rests on Reinhardt's five acres of land in White. The bread is sold to restaurants like Dynamic Dish, as well as at local farmers markets (Morningside and Decatur) and Westside Garden Market on Howell Mill Road.
But if you're looking to tear through a loaf of your own, don't worry. "Our main focus right now is online ordering and direct-to-door delivery," said Reinhardt.
For more information, call 770-479-5162, or www.magnolia-bread.com.
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