Wild Flour Bread

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Published on March 31, 1999 © 1999- The Press Democrat BYLINE: Miriam Silver Staff Writer PAGE: D1 Jed Wallach's work day at his Wild Flour Bread bakery begins the day before. At 2 p.m., he starts feeding his 6-by-10-foot brick oven with logs of dried eucalyptus. In the next eight hours, he will feed the fire, and hand mill fresh spelt, rye and red wheat until it becomes a silky powder. He and two other bakers -- his 17-year-old daughter, Mia, and her friend Michele Guinn, 20 -- will work 300 pounds of dough by hand and place it in plastic buckets. A passer-by at 10 o'clock at night looking through the huge farmhouse-size windows of the bakery will see red flames shooting high inside the brick oven. By 5 the next morning, the logs will have burned down to a gray ash, which Wallach will mop out. He and the other bakers will shape the bread and place it in willow baskets lined with white Belgian linen. By 7, the oven should have cooled to 600 degrees and the bread will have risen. With double-edged Gillette razor blades, Wallach will score the yeasty loaves. With an almost audible sigh, they will breathe with each slice, and he will quickly dump the loaves on a 10-foot-long wooden pallet to slide inside the oven. He will spray a little water onto the hot oven bricks to create the steam that helps form a perfect crust on each loaf. The sticky buns and cheese fougasse should be ready for his first customers when he opens at 8:30 a.m. "The bread doesn't wait. It's morning. It's growing. You have to move fast," Wallach said. Since November, Wallach has been baking bread in a building that was a former feed mill at the top of the scenic Bohemian Highway. Locals have quickly made Wild Flour a gathering spot every Friday, Saturday and Sunday morning, lining up early for the chunky sticky buns, mitt-shaped fougasses, and crusty loaves of French bread that often sell out by noon. Wallach, 46, who quit a successful specialty glass business in Santa Rosa three years ago, has become the trusted baker of this West County hamlet. He had no particular background in cooking or baking yet has managed to build himself a living, breathing dream. "I was just an anonymous person who produced a product (in the glass business)," Wallach said. "Here, people know me. It's ridiculous, but I get to hold every baby who comes in. I am safe. I am the baker." Customers thank him. They are sad when they are too late for the spelt loaf and vow to return earlier the next day. "I have been thanked so many times," he said. "I don't know what I expected. I just knew I would be happy here." Wallach grew up in San Francisco. He and his former wife studied at Chartres cathedral in France. In the '70s they opened a stained glass company in Berkeley, then moved Wallach Glass Studio to Santa Rosa 15 years ago. They have four children. But three years ago, they split up and Wallach sold his share of a business in which he was no longer happy. "I had no idea what I was doing. I was terrified the money would run out. I have four kids to support," he said. Wallach and a friend, Tissa Stein, talked about baking bread.

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