Albemarle Baking Co - Charlottesville, Virginia
The town itself has a great baking scene with places like Bodo’s Bagels serving up breakfast and lunch on a bagel. There’s BreadWorks, managed by WorkSource Enterprises (an organization that provides training and employment to people with disabilities) turns out lovely breads, pastries and cakes in the Preston Plaza Shopping Center. On the northeastern edge of town is a Whole Foods that has managed to retain the look and feel of a health food store (in a good way). Here you will find one of the few Whole Foods Markets with a bakery that actually produces it’s own breads, cakes and pastry in house from scratch. They do so mostly with organic flour and ingredients and the array of breads and other items is amazing given the space constrains imposed on them by the rest of the store.
And then there is Albemarle Baking Co at 418 West Main St., an absolute jewel of a bakery. It’s owned and run by Gerry Newman. It is in a small 3-4 unit shopping “group” (You’d never use the term mall or plaza here). The building is painted lovely shades of purple and mustard and the lettering on the windows of the bakery is clean and just pulls you in.
Once inside the bright colors continue. There is comfortable seating and a long display counter in which the most beautiful cakes and pastries sit. On the wall behind is the bread: a wide variety of mostly naturally leavened loaves, with baguettes and other lighter offerings.
Out back is where the baking gets done. It a good sized space for a bakery of this size but they have filled it up. The oven is off to the right near some windows that let in a good deal of natural light. So many bakeries operate in window-less warehouse type spaces where the only light is from florescent bulbs high overhead. For bakeries who fashion themselves as “artisan” bakeries the visual component of the finished loaves is just as important as the flavor and texture. Maximum flavor comes from an appropriately baked loaf. And once the variables of oven temperature, steam amount, and approximate bake time are set, the baker’s eye ends up being the final arbiter of the finished loaf. It’s got to look done. It’s tough to do that in poor lighting. But at Albemarle Baking, with the oven next to the one bank of windows the baker has every opportunity to examine the loaves under good light. And with the cooling racks on this side of the bakery the light on the finished loaves gives them such a nice look.
The pastries are worked up in a small air-conditioned room just behind where the baker loads the oven. This room has windows on both the bakery side and the retail side which draws the baking area into the retail without all the noise, dust and humidity. Plus it connects the pastry people to the whole bakery. The pastries here are world class examples of fine techniques and good ingredients.
You really need to spend some time in Charlottesville Virginia just to experience a lovely town. And once, there you need to take time out and visit Albemarle Baking Co. Below you will find the formula for their naturally leavened Olive Thyme Bread. Perhaps the loveliest combination in a bread comes from olives and thyme paired with a slight sourness of a natural culture.
This article was originally posted: April 30, 2007.
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