With years of experience and long-standing passion for bread making, Bryce Johnson now operates Companion Breads, a community-supported bakery (CSB) modeled much like community-supported agriculture (CSA). Bryce sells shares for his artisan breads, which are baked in his backyard brick oven. Collecting my weekly loaf of bread, often still warm from the brick oven, is one of my favorite jaunts.
Bryce started making bread in high school “to keep busy and stay out of trouble.” His first attempt was doughnuts fried in bacon grease. (How many of us remember a can of bacon drippings stored under the kitchen sink?) After the doughnuts, he quickly moved on to caramel rolls and sweet breads. “I was pretty good at that,” he said with a grin. In college he baked bread for his housemates and later worked as a cook in an urban studies program. Throughout graduate school and later as a husband, dad, and pastor, baking bread remained a passion.
Alongside his devotion to serving his church was his desire to expand his commitment to bread making. Knowing he didn’t want to work in a commercial bakery, he decided to set out on his own. He started his venture by taking a class on building brick ovens from the North House Folk School. The late Alan Scott, an Australian considered to be the guru of brick ovens, was his teacher. With this new knowledge and a lot of help from neighbors and friends, Bryce built the brick oven in his backyard in 2002 and uses it still today for his CSB.
In 2009, wanting to learn more about bread baking and the concept of community bread ovens, Bryce embarked on a three-month sabbatical that was funded by a grant from the Lilly Endowment. The profound question What will make your heart sing? was central to the application process. It was a lovely question, Bryce said, and one he’d never been asked before.
The sabbatical took him first to a farmhouse in southern Tuscany. Here, with Irish, Scottish, and American bakers, he took a class on wood-fired baking and used a 100-year-old brick oven fueled with olive branches.
From Italy, he traveled to the Dordogne region of Southwestern France and for a month worked with Jean Jacques, a baker who made only one kind of bread, whole-wheat sourdough, that he sold to local markets. Bryce remembers him fondly: “He was a baker, a philosopher, and a gentleman. He was such a delight.” Jean Jacques gave Bryce a sourdough starter that Bryce continues to use when making his own bread. Bryce also visited several nearby community ovens that are used occasionally for local gatherings but are no longer in common use.
The final stop on his sabbatical was to the Isle of Iona where Bryce stayed for a week in an ancient abbey. The abbey, located on a small, desolate island with a rugged coast, is accessed only by crossing the sea and then taking a series of smaller boats. To Bryce, it felt like a holy place. Here the philosophy was that work and worship are integrated; they aren’t two separate worlds. The philosophy, the setting, and the purposeful work he was assigned created an important space for reflection before returning home.
The sabbatical experience was pivotal for Bryce. He learned that what makes his heart sing is “to create with my hands and observe people enjoy the delight of something that tastes good.” The sabbatical also expanded his knowledge of bread making and provided time for deeper reflection.
“We live in a hurry-up world. Speed and efficiency are highly valued. Bread making is a slow art. It requires an intentional rhythm of work and rest, effort and then rising. When this tempo is honored, the dough acquires the strength it needs to withstand the intense heat of the oven. When the tempo is honored, the complex flavors hidden within the flour emerge and combine. And I think, we, like bread, need an intentional rhythm if we are to be strengthened for our living in this world and we are to be the flavor the world needs.”
Bryce returned from sabbatical refreshed yet questioning what to do with his future. It wasn’t long before he was approached by some congregants in his church to build and develop a community bread oven. The endeavor provided a new focus for Bryce and a wonderful means to connect the church to the community. Under his guidance, the church’s oven was built in 2010 and is used for neighborhood events, fundraisers, and classes as an central part of the church’s mission of community outreach.
As Bryce approached retirement, he began wrestling with what might be next for him. The idea for starting his CSB began serendipitously with a call from Michael Sellers, a baker in New York who had listened to Bryce’s 2014 TEDx Talk and was inspired to contact Bryce. Upon learning that Bryce and his wife, Jody, were traveling in the area, Michael invited them to his home. Over dinner, Michael described his CSB, and Bryce soon began exploring the process to establish one in his own community.
Today, Companion Breads offers subscriptions for weekly loaves of artisan bread, including rotating selections such as dried cranberry and walnut pain au levain, yogurt rye, Vollkornbrot, traditional whole wheat sourdough, baguettes, pizza dough, and other choices.
When asked what he hopes people appreciate about his bread, he replies, “That takes a long time to make, and it is made by human hands. That the process hasn’t been rushed, and, because of that, the bread has more character and flavor.”
What does Bryce keep? He has kept the sour dough starter from his friend Jean Jacques, the baker in Southern France who taught him the art of making a perfect loaf of whole wheat sour dough. “I like knowing that my bread has its origins from a traditional bread baker from Southern France.”
Take some time and think about what makes your heart sing.
[Title image by Moon Lake Multimedia. All rights reserved.]
