Wooden Spoon Cafe & Bakery: a bakery that doesn't bake bread

By Laura Shunk Tue., Jul. 19 2011 at 5:07 PM

Categories: Follow That Story, The Dish

Mark Manger

The cinnamon rolls are baked in-house -- but the bread isn't.

Wooden Spoon Cafe & Bakery, which I reviewed last week, is now my weekend haunt, and I regularly hang out at one of the tables in this small spot, digging into pastries baked in the open kitchen just behind the counter.

I also love the breakfast and lunch sandwiches here, with smart fillings piled onto brioche and crusty baguettes -- but even though these sandwiches are served in a bakery, the breads are not baked at Wooden Spoon.

According to the ingredients list written on a chalkboard by the counter, Trompeau Bakery and City Bakery are responsible for the breads in the sandwiches.

Good as those purveyors are, the outsourcing struck me as odd: a bakery that doesn't make its own bread?

"It's a space issue," one employee told me -- which made some sense, since proofing dough and allowing it to rise does take some real estate.

But Jason Burgett, the chef and co-owner of Wooden Spoon, has a much more detailed explanation. "We never intended to make bread," he says, noting that before he trained in pastry-making at Adagio Bakery (which he eventually took over), he'd worked on savory lines. Bread-making is an entirely different kind of baking -- and that's just not what he and his wife, Jeanette, wanted to be doing at Wooden Spoon.

Instead, they concentrate on creating the treats, and they simply bring in bread from bakeries that specialize in bread-making.

And so far, it seems like a sweet deal.

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