Our Daily Bread
story by Donna Hecker & photography by Talitha Schroeder
A loaf of bread has to do a lot of heavy lifting in the Holly Hill universe. It must be sturdy enough to survive a panini press, neutral enough to anchor a fridge worth of toppings yet still be full of yeasty wheat flavor, and capable of going from tender to toasty on command.
All of which perfectly describes our Midway Bakery white bread. You’ll find it on all our menus, usually in a supporting role, except for times like now when it takes center stage to co-star with ripe garden tomatoes and very little else during our Bluegrass Tomato Jam.
Like everything we serve, our breads are made by hand, from scratch, out of local flour from Weisenberger Mill. When our restaurant family was still young, Chris and Ouita opened Wallace Station to bake bread and desserts for Holly Hill Inn – and sell sandwiches on the side.
We all know how that turned out, so since 2012 bread and desserts have been baked at the Midway Bakery housed in the former Midway Elementary School. Michael Barcus, who’s been at the bakery almost from the start, gave us a master class on Midway Bakery white bread, the foundation for so many beloved sandwiches.
Michael’s not sure how he made the leap from life as an Army mechanic servicing Humvees in Iraq to baking bread in Midway but we’re glad he did. He drives an hour from his home in Owen County every morning to make loaves of sourdough, wheat, and rye in addition to our classic white.
To keep up with tomato sandwich demand, Michael measured out a double batch the day we stopped by. Fifty pounds of flour, a bit of salt and sugar, instant yeast, warm water and vegetable oil all went into a giant Hobart mixing bowl where it was quickly churned into a cohesive mass of rapidly expanding dough. After a two-person hoist onto the prep table to empty the bowl, Michael grabbed a dough scraper and got to work.
Cut off a chunk of dough, weigh it, set aside. Every three passes, Michael shaped the amorphous blobs into smooth rounds with a couple of tucks and folds and a quick spin on the tabletop, until there were 26 identical almost-loaves ready for their final pat-down.
Next he built a Jenga tower of loaf pans and started turning rounds into rectangles – again using just his hands, Michael patted each into a rectangle, then rolled it up like a sleeping bag and firmly pressed it down into a waiting loaf pan.
All 26 loaves now confined to their pans, Michael placed them in a proofing cabinet while he turned his attention elsewhere. From start to finish, the whole process has taken about 45 minutes.
It would be another 45 minutes before the loaves went to the oven and we had other places to be, but left knowing our daily bread was in good hands. Confirmed by photographic proof sent a couple of hours later.
The routine gets repeated several times a week – for loaves of focaccia, rye, wheat, and sourdough which find their way to Holly Hill Inn, Wallace Station, Penny’s, Windy, Honeywood, Smithtown, Zim’s, even to events at Fasig-Tipton.
At the risk of mixing our metaphors, the staff of life is also the linchpin of our little company. Bread is the one item that’s on everyone’s menu; it links us all together with the Midway Bakery right in the middle.
Hands made our bread. Hands serve it. And if you’re enjoying a saucy tomato sandwich on a hot August day, you’ll need both your hands to eat it.
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