Jensen - A bakers year: twelve months of baking and living the simple life at the Smoke Signals bakery

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To my mom and dad, who taught me to be kind and work hard in equal measures, and to my brothers, who were always lighting things on fire

DEAR FRIEND,

Baking is a technique by which heat is gradually transferred from the surface to the center, changing a raw foodstuff into something edible. This process straddles the line between science and superstition. Choices we make concerning a bread or cake have as much to do with chemical reactions or with how we woke up. Starting from scratch, one must understand and abide by the specifics. Once the basics are mastered, it becomes clear there are NO RULES.

The draw of a wood fired oven is in the quality of heat. It immediately affects anything in its presence. Penetrating to the core in a short period of time evokes an internal lightness and an outer ruggedness. This mountain bakery, Smoke Signals, is an oven in its own right. Here, pressure and circumstance have cooked me from the inside out.

I arrived at this humble homestead many times. Initially, I came as a seeker : searching for a baker and his bread. Now, years later, in a series of twists, I am responsible for upholding the cycles of flour, culture, and fire.

The greatest lesson I have learned is the value of commitment. While parts of my life imploded, lighting a fire gave me something to wake up to. I have heard it said you dont marry the perfect person; you marry the person youre with when youre ready. I found myself here, desiring a union, so I wed an old oven.

This choice has left me outside of a culture of immediate gratification. It takes several days to bring the bread and oven together in harmony.

Yet I am not immune to the pervasive effects. We have lost the ability to communicate face-to-face, preferring instead the company of a touch screen. We fall in love with impressions. Most bread today is exactly that : an impressions. Filler, not food, has become the normal.

I beg you to build a circle of wonder around your baking and protect it. It is a small act that contains the greatest effort : to remain awake, to remain adaptable, and to remain in love. Dont toss it aside. Dont trade it in. Stay and practice. Your Kitchen is a laboratory of the sacred order. Time and temperature will find you in the correct place.

As we make bread, we make ourselves.

Warmly,

tara

The bakery wakes in spring, peaks in summer, winds down in fall, and sleeps in winter. The deepest part of the coldest month is suited for reflection. A time when the experiments of last year are evaluated, celebrated, and laid to rest. The silence draws out a nostalgia. I have come to this place several times, as many iterations of myself. Personalities layered like a stack cake. Although I traveled the country baking professionally through my twenties, baking has evolved into my own personal practice. The rituals and rhythms of flour, water, and fire allow me to process a changing world. This little strip of land has watched me become a woman.

What I refer to as the bakery is two buildings, one my home, and the other, a one-room kitchen with an outdoor Alan Scott oven and tiny upstairs apartment. The space was transformed by Jen Lapidus into a bakery in the late nineties under the name Natural Bridge; my role here is to steward a timeless mission once printed on Jens bread bags: TRUTH , LOVE , AND GOOD BREAD . At some point it will be passed to the next wayward baker. I am but a housekeeper sandwiched between a historical reenactment and the future in which economic systems have collapsed and we are returned to our own two hands. I make the most of my time. And occasionally watch it slip through my fingers.

When I first passed through the door, Jen was already absent. Dave Bauer, hailing from Wisconsin, had reclaimed the space under the name Farm & Sparrow and was making what was rumored to be the worlds best bread; I sought him out. Borrowing a car, I drove the thirty minutes from Asheville to Madison County: the jewel of the Blue Ridge. I got lost, of course. Finding a row of men sitting in front of a bar that was also a general store that was also a tea shop, I inquired for directions. They called the bakery by various namesit was indeed familiar. One had done the electrical. Another remembered building the oven. The most I gathered was keep going.

Drive through the junkyard past the rafting company. Take a left between the fire station and the hairdresser. At the end of the tobacco field, take a right. Go past the abandoned gas station. If you reach the river, youve gone too far. Watch out for the dogs that chase cars and the rooster in the road. Take a left at the teal mailbox.

People werent lying. The bread was good. Some of the best Id ever tasted. Naturally leavened. Starters made with 100 percent whole-grain flour. Wet, loose dough. Hand shaped. Long fermentations. Blazing hot oven. It was my first glimpse of how breads and ovens evolved together: a whole working ecosystem of flavor. I left the next day to take a baking job on the West Coast, carrying a loaf of seeded bread onto the plane and consuming it feverishly.

I came back. This time to work at Farm & Sparrow creating pastries and granola and bagging the holy grail of bread. I eventually followed Dave when he relocated, and the little one-room shop went dormant. In the passing of time, I struck out on my own, learning how to farm and selling bread and tarts at the local market, illegally baking out of a barn in an oven that stood on wobbly cinder blocks. By then Jen had started running her mill, Carolina Ground. When I met her there to pick up flour, she suggested I consider leasing the space, and we came out to the vacant bakery to discuss its future. It needed to be cleaned and resurrected, but it had potential. I scrubbed it on my hands and knees. Washing away my own traces.