Admittedly most of us couldn’t imagine running a one man (or woman) bakery. How do you mix, bake, deliver, take orders and all the other thousand things that a bakery owner must do? How would you take a day off? Robert Hunt is the sole baker and owner of Bohemian Bread in Marshfield, Vermont and has managed to do it all and be successful. Of course we all set various marks for what constitutes success but by any definition that includes profitability and quality of life Robert has achieved it. After spending some time with Robert some clear lessons could be drawn from his solo operation that would apply to a bakery of any size chief of which is how do you run a sustainable business. Robert and his wife, Annie, bought their property in 2003 and promptly set to converting an outbuilding into Robert’s bakery. It is a small (probably measures 12’ by 20’), simple space, with everything just about within reach: a necessity if you are going to be working alone and producing several varieties of bread. The west end of the bakery is the mixing area, windows run along the south side letting in good light even though the bakery is in the woods, and the east end is dominated by the wood burning oven in which Robert bakes all of his breads.

It’s a quiet place, conducive to making bread and doing it efficiently. Efficiency is a critical factor in any bakery, but in a one person operation it is everything. There are no other employees here, it’s just Robert. And, while the volume of dough produced is small by almost any standard, in order to meet the daily production schedule every step of the process must be accounted for and within reach.

Bohemian Bread bakes and sells several different kinds of breads, but my favorite is the Farm Bread, a beautiful, grainy and dense, naturally leavened loaf. Robert’s production is divided into two days: the first day is called Prep or Dough Day and the second day is Bake and Delivery Day. Starting at 9:00pm (the night before Prep Day) the starter is refreshed. The Prep day begins around 8 or 9am when the fire is built, and the starters are made up for the day’s production. The starter from the night before is built up into 12 pounds of rye/wheat starter for the Farm Bread and and additional 15 pounds of white starter for the other breads. These are liquid starters with a hydration around 125% (a bit higher than what one typically finds for a liquid starter: 110%).

During the first hour of the bake the fire needs to be tended regularly and then can be left alone for a few hours. Robert can run errands during this period while, as he says, everything ferments and burns.

Around noon he begins to mix the doughs. Robert has a particularly short mix for each of his doughs. That, coupled with high hydrations, gives his doughs and remarkable tanish-linen color. I asked him at least twice if there was any whole wheat or rye in some of his white doughs. There is not. For most of his breads Robert uses an organic flour with a relatively high ash: 0.58%. His short but thorough mix combined with good hydration yields a dough that still retains most of its carotenoid pigments which contribute a rich depth of color even in his white flour doughs.

Robert typically does 5 mixes of about 60 pounds of dough each in his 60qt Hobart Mixer (I told you this was a small bakery). After each mix the dough is placed into tubs and is turned 3 times during the two hours following each mix. After the final turn the doughs sit for another 1 hours. Total bulk fermentation time is around 3 to 3 hours. A typical mix at Bohemian Bread yields about 300 pounds of dough for approximately 160 loaves.

Production resumes around 430pm with the dividing of doughs (done by hand, on the bench). By 530pm the doughs are being shaped and everything is typically done by around 7pm. The fire, which has been burning all day, is now reduced to coals in the very back of the oven. Robert rakes the fire to the front where the heat is allowed to soak into the stone for another couple of hours. At 9pm the remaining coals are raked to the very front of the oven which is then closed for the night. As Robert told me: during the night the temperature falls, but at the same time the heat is soaking deeper into the masonry where it is stored for the next day’s bake.

The next day (bake day) starts at 5am. Robert begins by raking out the remaining coals and mopping clean the floor of the oven. The bake generally begins around 545am and generally consists of 5 loads of 30 to 40 loaves each. By 8am the breads are cool enough to bag and by 1030-11am the van is packed and Robert is off to make the deliveries to the 7 wholesale accounts he has. By 1pm he is back home and, as he proudly tells you: the rest of the day is mine.

A common theme ran through most of our conversation while I was at Bohemian Bread: sustainability. Robert uses organic flours in his breads but not necessarily because they are better flours, but because he believes in the sustainability of organic farming practices. Bohemian Bread operates on a business model that, quite successfully, would work just about anywhere and the blueprint is here for all to see: one guy taking a limited number of inputs (flour, water, yeast and salt, a small amount of electricity and wood) and turning out a tasty and healthful food that is consumed within a small radius of his bakery.

But this type of sustainable business requires a mindset that would challenge many of our notions of success. There is a limit to the volume of business that Bohemian Bread can achieve. To grow the business beyond its current state would cause the ethics (quality of life and sustainability) behind Bohemian Bread to come unraveled. Larger equipment would have to be purchased. To pay for the new equipment more bread would have to be sold and in rural Vermont that could mean many more miles of deliveries. And with capital investments and the hiring of more employees there can be a considerable period of time before any increase in profitability can be realized. To stay the business that Robert wants to run he has to accept a limit to the earning capacity of his bakery.

So what is the lesson for those of you who are not content to set a limit on growth of your bakery operation? I think the ideas behind Bohemian Bread can be quite successfully scaled up to serve some of the largest baking operations: know the limits of your current operation and before you undertake the next expansion identify what you will gain and what you may lose. Balance that equation and then proceed. Unlimited growth is not realistic for any business. Find your target and once you get there identify whether growing again is really what is needed or can you take what you have already achieved and refine it for the betterment of your business, your employees and your customers.