There’s something about Karl’s Bread that keeps customers lining up outside his booth at area farmers markets. It might be the chocolate croissants which, I can attest, are divine. Or the biscotti, or the focaccia, or the Asiago bagels, or maybe it’s the more than fourteen flavors, from sun-dried tomato & thyme to wild rice craisin to cardamom bread that brings folks back. Sally, Karl’s mom, and Karl and a crew of family and friends bake daily during the farmers market season. Karl starts at 2am mixing dough, others come to form it into loaves and refrigerate it. It comes out in the afternoon while the ovens heat up and has to “jiggle” just perfectly before it’s put in to bake.
It’s been a round-the-clock all-family members on board effort every summer for eleven years now. When Karl’s father moved his wood shop out of a large pole building on their rural Mt. Iron property, Karl moved in and started acquiring baking equipment. Sally shows me antique mixers that came from abandoned bakeries and a huge croissant dough roller that explains the flakiness of Karl’s croissants. One by one, ovens and refrigerators and huge stainless steel work tables and mixers as tall as me were added to the two-room work area. A massive fan provides ventilation—no air conditioning here.
They bake under the Cottage Food Law in Minnesota, which allows the sale of non-potentially hazardous baked goods without a retail license, but would eventually like to upgrade to be able to sell to grocery stores and bakeries. That requires a new septic system and some remodeling to meet commercial kitchen standards. But Karl’s father died unexpectedly last Valentine’s Day and those plans are on hold for a bit. He was the expert on bagels and a key part of the baking effort. Other family members have stepped up to help the endeavor. (Rest in peace, Vince Jonas.) It was another relative, Uncle Charlie Jonas, who was a sculptor and also baked artisan breads, who really inspired Karl. It was Charlie who got the sourdough starter going that Karl still uses today, twenty years later.
Sally says “we call it the Beast because it demands to be fed so often.” They have a white and a wheat flour starter. Most of Karl’s Bread is sourdough and that makes it a bit unique. Sally talks about folks coming to buy the bread for their wheat-sensitive children who can’t eat regular bread. Sourdough is pretty amazing in that way. It depends on wild yeasts and lactic acid as it ferments. A wide variety of beneficial bacteria species thrive in the starter as well, generating acids that yeast can tolerate but that undesirable growths, like mold, cannot. So “starter” uses biological leavening to produce light, airy bread. And, in the process, it modifies the elements of wheat flour that are toxic to celiac and wheat-sensitive folks, which is why Sally’s customers buy it for their wheat-sensitive children to enjoy.
If’ you want to pursue the fascinating topic of sourdough starters, check out the Global Sourdough Project, where they’ve studied hundreds of existing starters from all over the world. (http://robdunnlab.com/projects/sourdough/) It turns out that wild yeasts, which exist abundantly in all atmospheres, are harvested by the flour and water “slurry” and give you access to all of the characteristics and the flavors and the aromas that come with those different yeasts. So sourdough will vary from place to place, depending on the wild yeasts that are floating around in the air. A way to use nature’s abundance that I hadn’t really thought about.
Back to the Jonas baking building set out in acres and acres of gorgeous northern Minnesota woods, a cool respite when the building heats up with all the ovens going. Everyone has a different job here, and it operates around the clock during the farmers market season. One of the crew specializes in bagging and tagging the baked goods, packing them in Buhl Water boxes, and getting them ready for the Tower, Ely, Hibbing, Grand Rapids, and Virginia farmers markets each week. Each sale supports the Iron Range economy. And Karl and Sally buy almost all of the ingredients locally too: flour from Homestead Mills in Cook, flavorings, herbs and seeds from Natural Harvest Food Coop in Virginia, wild rice from Grand Rapids, even the parchment on which each loaf is baked comes from Range Paper.
I asked about “secrets” to how good this bread tastes. Karl pulls out a stainless steel steamer—the loaves get a shot of steam during the baking process that does something good to the crust. Sally and Karl also take tips from their customers. One woman was looking to reproduce a bread she remembered from her childhood. Each week at the market she would taste and suggest a modification until the bread finally matched her memory of a Swedish multigrain rye with caraway. That bread is named for her. Another Finnish rye suggested by a customer uses a buttermilk starter that ferments from Tuesday until Friday before it leavens the loaves.
So visit one of the local farmers markets (you can find their locations and hours at www.arrowheadgrown.org) and sample some Asiago Basil or Jalapeno Cheddar or Apple Bread from Karl’s Bread. And, if you’re lucky, they might have biscotti or croissants or focaccia or ‘everything” savory bagels that day too. Yum!