Zingermans Bakehouse. - Zingermans Bakehouse

Text copyright 2017 by Amy Emberling and Frank Carollo.

Photographs copyright 2017 by Antonis Achilleos.

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced in any form without written permission from the publisher.

ISBN 9781452157009 (epub, mobi)

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Names: Emberling, Amy, author. | Carollo, Frank, author.
Title: Zingermans Bakehouse / by Amy Emberling and Frank Carollo ; photographs by Antonis Achilleos.
Description: San Francisco : Chronicle Books, [2017] | Includes index.
Identifiers: LCCN 2016057669 | ISBN 9781452156583 (hc : alk. paper)
Subjects: LCSH: Bread. | Zingermans Bakehouse. | LCGFT: Cookbooks.
Classification: LCC TX769 .E54 2017 | DDC 641.81/5dc23 LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2016057669

Designed by Alice Chau & Anna Carollo.
Illustrations by Ian Nagy & Ryan Stiner, Zingermans Service Network

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San Francisco, California 94107
www.chroniclebooks.com

Most books have an acknowledgments page, but weve decided to make this a page of appreciations. In Zingermans Community of Businesses, we end our meetings with appreciations. The completion of this book seems like the end of a long meeting. Here are our heartfelt appreciations:

Thank you, Bakehouse staff past and present, for your contributions in creating the bakery. Without you there wouldnt have been a book to write.

Many appreciations to the current and former members of our BAKE! staff for your early work on recipe documentation, help with recipe testing, and baking for photos.

Jake Emberling and Emily Ramsey, thank you for so diligently testing many of the recipes. The book wouldnt have happened without your help.

Anna Carollo and Margaret Carollo, it was fun to work together in this different way, and we loved your enthusiastic, detailed feedback and color commentary about the recipes you tested.

Ruby Emberling, thank you for your super-helpful feedback about our essays. Your thoughtfulness and encouragement made a difference.

Kathy Shipan, thanks for being such a joyful and energetic recipe tester and for working on the project recipes.

Geoff Emberling, we cant thank you enough for your conversations, which helped us form our thoughts; your editing suggestions, which improved our writing; and your formatting skills. Also thank you for your patience and support during this year of unprecedented work.

Thank you, Judith and Bernard Leviten and the entire Carollo clan, for your constant love and encouragement for all our work at the Bakehouse.

Thank you, Ari Weinzweig and Paul Saginaw, for setting out on this adventure, for being strong role models, and for our conversations about the book and your emotional support throughout the process.

Thank you to our Zingermans partners. Without your support, cooperation, and counsel, wed have a very different bakery, and one not nearly as good.

Thank you, Michael London, for being our first and most influential baking teacher.

Thank you, Lisa Ekus. Your support, guidance, counsel, and advocacy on our behalf were fantastic.

Thank you to the team at Chronicle, especially Sarah Billingsley and Alice Chau, for your professional expertise in editing and design.

Antonis Achilleos, we love the photos you took of our food. We will think of you every time we look at our book.

The search for great bread, my friend the food writer Paula Wolfert once wrote,... has been my passion. Whenever I travel I constantly ask people: Where can I find the best bread around here? Who is the best baker? And nearly always, as soon as I ask, the eyes of my respondent will light up. He or she will utter a name and an address. And then I am off upon the hunt.

Im not much different. My own search started 35 years ago when Paul Saginaw and I opened Zingermans Delicatessen in a slightly out of the way, oddly angled, two-story, turn-of-the-19th-century orange-brick building at the corner of Detroit and Kingsley Streets in Ann Arbors Kerrytown neighborhood. My hunt took a great leap forward when, in the fall of 1992, we joined with our friend Frank Carollo to open our own bakery. Today, if Paula Wolfert were to come to town, inquiring about the best bakers, Im pretty sure that almost every local food lover would send her to 3711 Plaza Drive, to Zingermans Bakehouse.

Its hard to imagine eating well in Ann Arbor without the breads, brownies, pies, and pastries from the Bakehouse. While its certainly not perfect (what is?), I can say with great certainty that Zingermans Bakehouse is very much what we hoped forand much moreback in 1992 when we first sat down to talk: a special place that would produce traditional, full-flavored, artisan baked goods; a business in which the staff would feel a part of something special; a place that was rooted in its community, one that the community cared for with equal reverence and respect. The Bakehouse succeeded on all counts!

To be clear, Im a cook, not a baker. Perhaps because I dont do it myself, I hold everyone who bakes well in high esteem. The best home bakers, I believe, deserve a lot of credit. Special occasions at their houses are always marked by marvelous-looking and great-tasting baked goods. They wow their family and friends on holidays, weekends, birthdays, anniversaries. They make everything from scratch, by hand, with great loveeach item is baked with the care that you would put into making something for someone that you care deeply about.

I think what impresses me most about what Frank, Amy, and the Bakehouse crew do is that all of those same things are totally true of what goes on at Zingermans Bakehouse. But instead of one baker working solely when inspired to feed his or her loved ones on special occasions, what happens at the Bakehouse is anything but occasional. It happens literally every day, all day, all year. Over a hundred caring people on staff relentlessly working their collective butts off 363 days a year to craft a million and a half loaves of artisanal bread and more than a million pieces of pastry, plus a whole array of soups and savories to serve in our shop for over two and a half decades!!! And yet, as big as those numbers may sound, they do it with the same care, the same love, the same commitment to making peoples days better as does the best skilled home baker. Businesses that can bake this well for so many years, stay healthy, take care of their crew, create financial stability, contribute to the community and continually improve every year are very few and pretty far between.