About seven feet above floor level in a run-down brick building in Barre, a thick band of soot extends across two interior walls. This, Carolyn Shapiro explains, is the “burn line” — the most palpable evidence of the building’s history, and an augury of its future.
Shapiro, a buoyant, energetic woman of 72, recently led a successful $25,000 Kickstarter campaign to begin the restoration of this unassuming building, which sits just behind Barre’s historic Old Labor Hall. More than a century ago, the one-story structure housed a bakery that literally provided the daily bread — about 150 loaves of it — to local laborers and, eventually, to residents of Barre and neighboring towns. The burn line indicates where a huge hearth once stood, and where a new, wood-fired oven will soon turn out loaves for Rise Up Bakery.
- Daily Bread Recipe
- 1 tablespoon active dry yeast
- 2 3/4 cups warm water
- 2 tablespoons coarse salt or 4 teaspoons table salt
- 5 to 6 tablespoons whole wheat flour
- 5 1/2 to 6 cups white flour, preferably unbleached
Directions
- Put yeast in large bowl with 1 cup warm water. Once it’s dissolved, stir in the remaining water, salt, whole wheat flour and about 5 1/2 cups of the white flour — enough to make a dough that holds together. Turn out dough onto a floured work surface and let rest. Scrape out and include any remaining bits of dough, then clean and dry the bowl.
- If dough is soft and sticky, add a bit more flour and then slap it down hard against the counter. Repeat several times, then start kneading, adding more flour as necessary. Knead about 10 minutes, until dough is smooth.
- Return dough to the clean, ungreased bowl, then cover bowl with plastic wrap and let stand until dough triples in volume.
- After the first rising, turn the dough out and punch it down. Return it to the bowl, cover and let rise until it doubles in volume.
- Punch the dough down again and turn it out onto a lightly floured work surface. Divide dough into five equal parts and form them into loaves.
- Put loaves into greased pans that are slightly bigger than the loaves. Cover pans with towels and let rise. Preheat oven to 450 degrees Fahrenheit.
- Just before baking, slash each loaf diagonally several times and place a pan of water in the bottom of the oven.
- After 15 minutes of baking, remove pan of water. Bake an additional five to 10 minutes in dry oven, until loaves are crusty and golden. The loaves should make a nice, hollow thump when struck. If they don’t, they may need to bake a bit longer.
Labor of Loaves
The original print version of this article was headlined “Labor of Loaves”
This article appears in Jun 3-9, 2015.
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