by Tracy Jones | Sep 30, 2019 | Eat, October 2019
It started with a desire for a hobby and a little help from the folks at Boulted Bread. And now, it has grown into, well, a more refined hobby. For Sean Malone, it’s simply about baking sourdough bread and giving it away to people who appreciate it.
“I’ve only been doing this for not quite a year,” says Malone, who, in his day job, is president and CEO of the Dorothea Dix Park Conservancy, the nonprofit which supports fundraising efforts for Dix Park. Standing in his kitchen, dressed in a blue apron with a wooden Lazy Susan standing by, Malone is waiting to take the next step in his baking process. “Part of why I love it as a hobby is learning everything from scratch.”
Malone, who didn’t know anything about baking sourdough at the beginning, found help and inspiration from the Instagram community. He watched what bread influencers did, copied their methods and eventually created his own Instagram handle, @sean.of.the.breads. Through tips and tricks from his online community, Malone’s bread-baking skills have grown.
Photography by f8 Photo Studios.
“I started scoring with a knife, which was terrible,” says Malone about the patterns he creates on the tops of his breads. “Then, I tried holding a razor blade, but then I was holding a razor blade by hand,” he laughs. Malone found his way to the page of a Connecticut bake shop, Wire Monkey, on Instagram and discovered a bread lame, a simple tool to hold the razor blade. With the lame and a box of 100 razor blades in his cabinet, his scoring became a lot easier.
“I started finding out all of these great things about sourdough home baking and I wanted to be part of that conversation and join the community,” Malone says.
Photography by f8 Photo Studios.
Today, Malone is on day three of his baking, a process some may consider tedious. The first day is dedicated to feeding the starter, the ingredient that breathes life into the bread. Day two is all about building the dough, which requires Malone to mix it all by hand, let it sit, stretch and fold, and then shape it over 7-8 hours. The last day is the baking day, two loaves at a time in his oven. Malone bakes five loaves of sourdough every weekend; he gives four away to those on his bread rotation, or waiting list, and he keeps one loaf for his family. His rotation of bread recipients has grown from about 35 to close to 80.
“I love the giving away nature of it and it’s a great way to share with all of our Triangle pals,” says Malone.
Indeed, much of Malone’s life has been centered around giving. From his years in philanthropy to his current position with the Conservancy, he loves engaging with the community.
“I get to spend all of my time with people dedicating themselves to something important,” says Malone. “All of the places I have worked have been focused on place. Places around ourselves shape who we are, as a person or as a community.”
While Malone baked New Year’s Day bread for the Conservancy and likes to throw a Hot Brown sandwich party the day after Thanksgiving, where friends bring Thanksgiving leftovers and throw them all together in sandwiches made from his bread, Malone doesn’t have any lofty plans for his sourdough. He’s simply working on growing his knowledge of the process.
“People said it was complicated,” says Malone. “It’s not as complicated as they said, but there’s so much to get your hands around and so much to learn. I’m still far away from being anything but a home baker who’s having a good time.”
Photography by f8 Photo Studios.
by Megan Dohm | Dec 10, 2018 | December 2018 / January 2019, Eat
“Is that a timer?”
Joshua Bellamy cocks his head. It’s a Friday morning at Boulted Bread, and timers are going off every 10 minutes or so. The sky is still pitch black, but the bakery has been quietly bustling for hours. In contrast to the dark chill of the outdoors, the bakery’s kitchen is warm, filled with a rich, grainy aroma and a work playlist bumping with a driving beat. Flour permeates the place—it is ingrained in the fabric of aprons, in comfy baker’s shoes, doughy handshakes, even in Bellamy’s ball cap.
“So much of bread is flour, over 50 percent is flour, so we wanted access to the freshest ingredient possible,” he explains, leaning against the small room where the in-house mill rests. The mill, built by co-founder Fulton Forde, is a centerpiece of both the kitchen and the customer’s area. It works in the background, emitting something between a hum and a grind, as th top millstone rotates steadily. Between the mill and the newly acquired sifter, 70 percent of the flour the bakery uses is milled in-house. Bellamy says the process of milling is essentially the same here as it has been since time immemorial; his team has the luxury of plugging its mill into the wall, but the basic process follows tradition.
The mill is characteristic of the mix of old and new in Boulted Bread. The space is full of young bakers honing a craft reminiscent of the Old World. The decor in the bakery is minimal, not in the intimidating white-on-white-on-white way, but in a way that sorts priorities in the interest of service and craft, rather than unattainable aesthetic. The bakers sort out collaborations by vibe and promote on Instagram, but they also foster community, working hard at a job that requires much heavy lifting and patience.
When Forde, Bellamy and Sam Kirkpatrick plotted out the idea for Boulted Bread around five years ago, they dreamed of a simple, sturdy bakery. To “boult” is simply to sift, and, Bellamy says, Boulted represents their sifted-down vision: to “do a small variety of things very well.” They drew up a menu reflecting this, with around five types of bread. They found their location off of West South Street, and renovated it, DIY style, financing the last three months of work through weekend bake sales. In August of 2014, Boulted Bread (staffed only by Bellamy, Kirkpatrick and Forde) opened its doors. Demand required the bakery to expand quickly to include a capable crew, but the work remains the same.
Since it is Friday, the bakeries are making more pastries for the weekend crowd. Chief pastry-maker Brittany Ansel will have a rotation of croissants, apple turnovers and sweet cinnamon spirals flying in and out of the oven throughout the morning. Up in the front half of the kitchen, Emily Dittmar and Dawn Keyser work on the bread. In both sections of the kitchen, everything but the oven is on wheels, to allow for the constantly shifting needs of the workspace. The team works well together, toeing the line of an industrious matter-of-factness with dedication to each task, and enjoyment of each other’s company. Ansel theorizes that the collaborative environment makes for better, more enriched bread. Hearty, full-sized loaves and bagel-esque bialys appear from the oven, the hefty door squeaking every time it’s opened for a quick check on the bread.
“When I first started baking bread, a lot of it was pretty mystical,” Bellamy explains of his baker’s mindset. “There’s a lot going on that you don’t quite fully understand. Then, because you learn more and more, the science kind of takes over for a phase—maybe for a couple of years. And then, at a certain point, you kind of forget about the science and it becomes mysticism again, or intuition.” That hard-won intuition guides the team as it adjusts to the daily variables in flour, temperature and humidity to create a product that is consistent but not mechanically uniform.
When you’re busy working in the bakery, sunrise sneaks up on you. One minute it’s dark, the next, streaks of pink fill the city sky and turn golden as a steady stream of quiet customers file in through the front door. Raleigh has much to offer this little bakery, both in terms of a solid, supportive set of fellow bakers and a community built of friends, collaborators and relatives.
“It’s really awesome for me that my grandparents come here on Sunday,” says Bellamy. “They go to church, and they come here.” Forde’s parents also stop in about once a week, to say hello and to administer a round of hugs, even though he retired from the bakery earlier this year.
“This place just beckons to all of us,” Bellamy continues. “It was a nice opportunity to not only be supported by a loving community that we grew up in and we know, but also to, in some small way, nourish that community, too.” Bellamy acknowledges that it sounds sentimental but, surrounded by people who genuinely care about the trade, and the people who pass through the shop each day, it rings true.
