Magnolia Bread Company

Uncle Mo is the culprit; as a kid I would visit him in Philly, and he would feed me this dense, dark, chewy marbled pumpernickel rye bread.  As we ate lunch I would eyeball the stuff and wonder how it was made and why it wasn’t anything at all like the white bread I ate at home.

 

Over the years I tried to replicate that Philadelphia rye, finally succeeding with the help of a recipe in Bernard Clayton’s “Breads of France”.

 

I learned to bake by trial and error.  Over the years I came to the realization that the bread needs time more then anything else.  

 

Time to meld its flavors.

Time to build its structure.  

Time to contemplate the universe.  

 

I talk to it.  

I play it soothing music.

 

My bread is simple: quality western hard red wheat flour, eastern soft red winter wheat from my fields, water, sea salt, and a wild yeast starter - along with a minute amount of active dry yeast.

 

I refer to my loaves as American artisan bread; I am not trying to replicate European hearth breads. There are legions of bakers doing a good job in that genre. My breads are different; they reflect a 400 year heritage of American baking.  I use rye, barley, wheat, corn, walnuts, sweet potatoes and tomatoes throughout my flatbreads and loaves.  In a world of frozen dough and mass-produced “artisan bread”  I am a purist to a fault: I grow the wheat, I mix the doughs, and I bake the bread.  

 

Since the 1760’s Eastern Shore wheat has been used for biscuit and cake flour; it fed General Washington’s troops at Valley Forge, and Delmarva was the (often unwilling) breadbasket of the Union Army during the American Civil War. 

 

Thirty-Five Percent of the wheat in my breads is grown at Slaughterton, our 14th generation family farm. Referred to as the “home farm” in family letters from the 19th century, the property was first surveyed by John Slaughter in September of 1657.  The 500 acre parcel was originally a tobacco plantation.  In the mid-1700’s the land was put in to wheat production.  Throughout the 1800’s the fields of Slaughterton produced wheat, barley and corn.  In the early 1900’s the family raised prized dairy stock and truck crops.  In the 1950’s soybeans were added to the rotation.  Today we still own 150 of the original 500 acre patent, raising wheat, field corn and soybeans. Slaughterton is one of a very few American farms owned and operated by the same family since first settlement.  And we are the only operation that I am aware of that grows the wheat and bakes the bread on premises. From seed to loaf.  Pretty cool.

 

I soak and simmer the grain before adding it to the mix.  This process adds moisture and flavor to the loaves.  When you cut into my breads you’ll see the grains of the 2017 crop of eastern red winter wheat that was grown in the fields behind our farmhouse and bakery on MD Rt. 300. 

 

Magnolia Bread Company began selling bread in 1993.  We are a family business dedicated to sustainable agriculture and economic development through the employment of members of our Eastern Shore community.