An Old Bakery in the New World
by Jennifer Cheng
Read on to see how Jennifer Cheng, a Princeton University student, captures the essence of Witherspoon Bread Company for her senior thesis.
In the late evening hours, the little bakery at 74 Witherspoon Street, in Princeton, New Jersey, doesn't house any particularly strong aromas. There is a slight warm smell of yeast and flour dust. The air is clear and toasty as the oven preheats. The bakery's effect on the nose is subtle, for the resident baker is just beginning his night's work. It is only in the early morning, between 2 and 5 a.m., when loaves of bread are turning golden in the oven, that delicious smells rise and float through the air, provoking the stomach to growl.
Scenes like this one are rare in America, where most bread is factory-made. From the very beginning, Witherspoon Bread Co. was intended by its owners to be a traditional European-style boulangerie, with bread baked on the premises and shaped by hands informed by centuries of craftsmanship. Both the bread and baker coming from an old lineage, bread made in the old way, with a baker who apprenticed in the old country.
The owners are the Momo Brothers, Carlo and Raoul, who are an institution in the culinary landscape of New Jersey. They own a small but impressive collection of merely five businesses, all restaurants with the lone exception of the bakery, but the ambition, pride and polish of the Momo enterprise make the whole of it seem far more formidable. When you step into one of the restaurants or into the bakery, it is not just any old place that you enter. It is a territory, a realm: Terra Momo, their restaurant group. You are literally entering Momo Land.
However, the character of a place is in its citizens. Though the Momos are the owners and beneficent monarchs, the core of the bakery is its master baker, Denis Granarolo, a native of France, 48 years old, who has practiced his trade for 25 years and running.
Granarolo (pronounced gra-na-ro-lo) refers to the Momos as my boss, but he calls Witherspoon Bread Co. my bakery, and the Momos also refer to it as Denis' bakery. Granarolo makes his personality felt, for both the Momos and Larry Robinson (executive chef of Mediterra and coordinator of supplies for the bakery) felt moved to mention that "There's an old saying about the baker. They have an air of superiority, because while the rest of us are asleep, they are up all night, making food for the world."
When pressed, both the Momos and Robinson hastily assert that they are speaking of pride, not arrogance. Whatever one may call it, this characteristic isn't immediately obvious in Granarolo. "It's not a very hard job," he says of his work. "It's more physical, not so intellectual." But he can be disdainful of those who produce bread to lower standards than his own. He has a poor opinion of Panera (the chain café and bakery), and of the in-house bakery at Wegman's. He suspects that both companies get their dough or bread delivered from warehouses, instead of making it on-site.
Good bread takes time, he says. When dough is sub-optimal, "you have to delay" and tell customers that certain breads are not available. Better to delay, he thinks, than to rush or cut corners. But since Granarolo is the baker for the Terra Momo restaurants, sometimes he has to compromise. "You have to deliver to restaurants…you have to just go with it."
Granarolo's manner is reserved, but he is unassuming and kind. He is obviously more comfortable using his hands than using his voice, and saves his concentration and energy for bread-making. The bakery, too, seems quiet, with no sound other than the hum and whirr of the oven and mixers, and some relaxing music playing at a low volume. Though Granarolo may be proud, it is a quiet pride: he would not be one to advertise himself.
Terra Momo does it for him. Once sold, any bread or pastry is enclosed in a fancy paper bag with the Witherspoon Bread Co. logo. Directly to the left of the counter, there is printed matter, all elegantly designed and accented with the Terra Momo logo of a scratchy square with a border, colored in the Terra Momo hues of burnt sienna and lime green. There is a menu, and a postcard with a promotional offer on the back. Both sport the Witherspoon Bread Co. motto: "It's not a meal without bread." Recently a new promo item was introduced: free magnets cut in the shape of an organic couronne loaf. There are also pamphlets on the Terra Momo Restaurant Collection with a profile of each property, bookmarks, and a flyer about the Terra Momo gift card, redeemable "at any of the dining concepts in the Terra Momo Restaurant Group."
The logos are attractive, but their usage is an exercise in branding, which seems removed from the mission of the bakery to simply provide good bread. They bring Witherspoon Bread Co. visually closer to slick operations like Panera, corporate-owned and publicly traded on the stock market. Although done with good taste, the combination of artisanal baking and professional marketing feels unexpected.
It was the Momos, not Granarolo, who named the bakery Witherspoon Bread Co. At first, they considered emphasizing the bakery's European heritage by having a French or Italian name, but eventually decided to tie the bakery's location within the community to its identity. The choice of "Bread Co." over "Bakery" also seems to emphasize America, not Europe.
Though they operate differently, the Momos and Denis Granarolo are in the bakery enterprise together, and Granarolo thinks of Terra Momo as a family company. His son works in Teresa's Café, the oldest of the Terra Momo restaurants, while attending Mercer County Community College. The Momos provided the sponsorship and money for Granarolo's move to America and for the opening of the bakery. Of the Momo's, Granarolo has not one unkind word. They "did all they could," he says.
Between customer and baker occurs another kind of territory demarcation. As one moves farther into the bakery, there is a jarring shift in décor, light and atmosphere.
The customers' area is delineated by warm wood floors and buttery yellow walls, with natural light streaming in through the large storefront windows. The ceiling is lined with silvery gray tiles. In the evening and early morning, the area is lit with pleasant and subdued incandescent light, although during these hours, there are few customers to appreciate the lighting, since the bakery's hours are Monday to Friday, 6 a.m. — 7 p.m., and Saturday and Sunday, 6 a.m. — 5 p.m.
A changing window display filled with perfect-looking bread is visible from the street. Inside, bread and pastries line the right wall, neatly stacked or laid in straw baskets, separated from the customer by a railing. Along the left wall runs a narrow stainless steel counter and wooden shelves displaying Nutella, jams, coffee beans, olive oil and focaccia seasoning, all for sale. At the far end are a small table and three chairs. Facing the customer is a glass counter filled with desserts and sandwiches, and behind that, the main deck oven, a behemoth of stainless steel, reaching to nearly the ceiling, several feet deep and with transparent doors. It can bake 16 trays of bread (about 60-100 loaves) at once. This oven lies at the border of the division between the baking area and the customers' area.
If customers behind the counter craned their heads to the left, they could see into most of the baking area. This was partly intentional, for Granarolo is proud of the transparency a one-room bakery offers to customers. Here, the floor abruptly changes to beige ceramic tile, which is sturdy and easily cleaned, but banal and ugly compared to the patina of the worn hardwood floor in the customers' area. The gray-tiled ceiling is cracked in places, though the same tiles on the customer's side are nearly immaculate. Overhead fluorescents shine harshly. They are cheaper and brighter than incandescent bulbs, but give off a far uglier light. A single incandescent bulb illuminates the bowl of the larger spiral mixer in the far left corner.
In the center of the baking area is a rectangular wooden island, nearly 6x12 feet, on which all the bread and pastry dough is shaped. Temperature-controlled retarder proofer cabinets, which look like large refrigerators, line the facing wall. To the left is a pallet of flour sacks, a smaller mixer, and loose bins of olives, slivered almonds and sun-dried tomatoes. To the right of the island are a smaller pastry oven and a manual molder. A scale and a reversible sheeting machine are free-standing and are placed near the island. In the back are an automatic divider (that is load cutting) machine and the dishwashing area. In other words, it isn't your grandmother's kitchen, though it is approximately the same size. The sheer amount of industrial-quality equipment may be surprising to someone unfamiliar with standard artisanal baking equipment. Overall, the baking area is clean, tidy, and very professional, though a bit industrial-feeling, and home to frenetic activity of an almost life-and-death intensity.
For each day of the week, a predetermined amount of bread must be made, upwards of 300 loaves a day. Granarolo is aided only by two production assistants. The ovens are hot both day and night, since production is divided into two shifts. "Here, it is so tiny, you have to be quite organized," Granarolo remarks. His bakeries in France were roomier, so things were not as rigorously managed. For the night shift, all the bread must come out of the oven and onto the shelves by 6 a.m., in time for the morning's sales and deliveries.
The alchemy of making a loaf of bread begins around 11 p.m., as Granarolo checks his schedule of how much bread must be made that night, cuts open a sack of flour, and tosses flour and yeast onto the electric scale. These go into the bowl of the larger spiral mixer, and water is fed into the bowl through a hose. Granarolo punches in the temperature and volume of water he wants each time he uses the hose. He also sets the time, speed and axis of kneading for the spiral mixer. After a certain amount of mixing, he weighs and adds the salt. Certain breads like the sourdough require a starter (prepared by Granarolo the previous day) to be added at the appropriate time. For flavored breads, olives, sun-dried tomatoes, nuts or cheese are thrown in. After the dough finishes mixing, it is left to rise.
The bowl of the mixer is several feet wide and deep, so Granarolo uses both arms to turn it, bracing himself against the floor. Then he reaches in and scoops out the risen dough with both hands and heaves it onto the scale, weighing it. He thumps and smoothes the dough onto the automatic divider, cuts the dough into ten or twenty loaves, or, in the case of focaccia, he runs the dough through the reversible sheeter to flatten it. If the shape of the final bread requires a pan, the appropriate pan is greased and Granarolo carefully fits the dough into it. Then the dough is put away on a shelf to relax.
Granarolo punctuates the flow of his work by periodically glancing at the clock. Depending on whether he is behind schedule or ahead, he either works faster or allows himself a cigarette break outside. As dawn approaches, he takes more frequent swigs of coffee. He never sits down while at work, circling around the island from scale to mixer, mixer to island, island to automatic divider, keeping an eye on several different processes at once. He works remarkably quickly and smoothly, almost running on automatic. When small things fail to go like clockwork, when a ball of dough does not land in the proper place when tossed, or when an empty flour sack wafts to the flour, Granarolo makes an impatient tsking sound.
After resting, the bread is molded in shapes: baguette (stick), batard (rounded loaf), boule (round), couronne (ring), epi (spiky baguette), almost always by hand, but in certain cases by the manual molder machine. Some breads are put into proofer retarder for up to a day; others do not need it. Immediately prior to baking, the loaves are glazed, dusted with flour, or decorated with scissor cuts. Then they are placed onto aluminum sheet pans, which are carefully lifted into the oven by a massive wooden paddle. The bread is carefully monitored, and when golden, is removed with the help of a six-foot-long conveyer belt attached to the oven. The loaves are briefly cooled, and then put on the shelves to be sold or put aside for delivery to one of the Terra Momo restaurants.
Throughout the process, Granarolo checks the texture of the dough by hand, occasionally putting a small piece of dough in his mouth to check flavor and texture. Texture of a finished loaf is what makes good bread — "The outside must be crusty, the inside must be creamy." Granarolo never consults a written recipe, for he has everything memorized. He either finds or creates his recipes. New recipes are arrived at by experimentation. "Bread has a basic recipe," he says, so new breads are variations upon the old patterns. Baking is a profession of experience. "You learn by making mistakes."
Certain breads require special handling, like ciabatta (a classic peasant bread with a crunchy, large-pored texture). Ciabatta dough must be put into olive-oil-coated bins and repeatedly folded upon itself. Croissants have a very involved production which requires multiple passes through the sheeter and several hours in the proofer retarder, as well as shaping and decoration.
The sequence of baking is tightly scripted, designed to ensure that all the breads are ready to go into the oven at approximately the same time. The rough order is: first the ciabatta, which needs the most time, then the baguettes and country breads, and finally the focaccia. Mixing generally occurs from 12midnight to 5am. The tightly-timed production interval keeps all the doughs extender-free and the bread preservative-free. This system was devised by Didier Rosada, a baker originally from Toulouse, France, who once was Head Instructor of the San Francisco Baking Institute. Rosada professionally assists bakeries in developing techniques and formulas, and was brought in by the Momos when the bakery opened.
While he works, Granarolo has four to five different kinds of dough in various stages. The bakery's current menu offers eleven different types of bread and pastry, plus daily specials. Furthermore, each type of bread or pastry is offered in different shapes or flavors. There are seven variations of croissant, for example: some in the traditional crescent shape, some pinwheel-shaped, some filled with chocolate, others dotted with raisins. The bakery also offers panini (sandwiches), prepared daily onsite, and desserts such as cheesecake and tarts, imported from the kitchens of Terra Momo restaurants. Prices range from $0.50 for a dinner roll to $10 for a large loaf of rye. The most popular item is the classic baguette, $1.95.
The production process may seem like only a mechanical movement of dough from one machine to another, but only an experienced baker knows how the dough should ideally look and feel at each stage. Granarolo's machine-like efficiency is also revealing. One night, he showed his assistant Maximo Davila how to shape batards. His instruction was nearly wordless, only saying "like this" as he demonstrated a succession of folds. He did not hesitate to undo Maximo's work when the batard was not rolled tightly or thoroughly enough. Though he neither praised nor criticized at the time, Granarolo remarked later that Maximo was a fast learner. Even so, Granarolo shaped five loaves in the time it took Maximo to shape one.
Near dawn, other employees begin to arrive. The atmosphere is loose and easy, with some laughing and camaraderie. Exhausted and more rumpled, Granarolo cleans off the island, puts on his coat, picks up his bag and sets off. He works all Sunday night but considers Sunday his day off. When he was younger, he worked all night six days of the week. His hours are heaviest during the holidays. Last Christmas, Granarolo worked sixteen hours straight, and his wife Christine, the bakery's manager, worked fourteen hours. He does not necessarily go to sleep immediately after his shift, even though he only has a few hours to rest before returning to work. One Tuesday morning, after finishing the night of baking, he interviewed a friend's kid who was interested in working at the bakery.
Larry Robinson, executive chef of Mediterra, coordinates supplies for the bakery. He estimates that the bakery spends about $2500 a week. The dream, he says, would be to have only one distributor for all the bakery's needs. Currently the bakery orders from two major baking and restaurant distributors, Dawn and Sysco, one major paper distributor, Crest, and several smaller distributors. Ingredients are chosen by trial and error — whatever works best. Quality, price and convenience are all considered. This leads to an interesting variety of ingredients.
Didier Rosada made an initial suggestion of which brands of flours to use. Then, in 1998, General Mills released Harvest King flour, a competitively-priced, winter-wheat, unbleached, unbromoted enriched flour. Most flours on the market were formulated for rough factory machine-handling, but Harvest King was intended to respond best to artisanal baking and hand molding. It is now the bakery's main flour. The bakery uses five different flours each week, all coming in 50 lb bags: 70 bags of Harvest King white bread flour, 10 bags or organic bread flour, 2 bags of medium rye, 2 bags of dark rye, and 2 bags whole wheat. That makes 4300 lbs per week.
Both fresh apples and canned pears are used for pastries. The bakery uses real vanilla (not vanillin, the artificial flavor), but the butter contains natural flavor. Focaccia pans are greased with good olive oil, but loaf pans are coated with nonstick spray. Three types of solid fat are used: (1) expensive European-style butter (with a higher fat content) for the croissants, (2) regular butter for more prosaic purposes, such as ganache, and (3) margarine, of all things, for the challah. Although Robinson is aware of the current backlash against margarine, which contains hydrogenated fats, the bakery continues to use it because it works better in challah dough than butter. Similarly, high-quality Callebut chocolate was chosen for the chocolate croissant mainly because it was the right size for the job and had the right consistency — not too drippy or hard.
While Robinson prefers for all ingredients to be fresh as possible, "it's a business," and "[we] aren't radicals," so compromises are made, though Robinson carefully avoids saying the word "compromise." Terra Momo doesn't take a hard-line stance of only buying local or organic. Instead, it engages in a limited but conscious support of those values. Responding to America's wave of interest in organics, Raoul Momo decided that it was important to have an organic bread on the daily menu.
Both of the Momos are friendly and urbane. They dress in suits and use phrases like "today's management style" and "a difficult concept to execute." Terra Momo has 250 employees total, including a marketing head, a CPA/Controller, and Human Resources division.
The Momos fit well in their roles as heads of a family business, and embody an interesting combination of tough and warm: savvy in business and very familial towards their employees, proudly independent yet clannish. Their polished speech and dress are a contrast to Granarolo, whose speech is frank and unadorned, who is always on his feet and working with his hands, who always looks tired, and whose clothing is casual, wrinkled and liberally dusted with flour.
Prior to opening Witherspoon Bread Co., the Momos ordered bread from bakeries in Trenton and New York to supply their restaurants' bread baskets. However, they were not satisfied with imported bread, which was never truly fresh by the time it arrived in New Jersey. Bread was the first thing that their customers tasted, and the Momos wanted that first impression to be a great one. "Why not do it ourselves," they thought. They began searching for a baker, and met Denis Granarolo through Olivier Frot, the owner of F.B.M. Baking Machines. Based on Frot's recommendation and a review of credentials, the Momos decided that Granarolo was the baker they wanted.
The Momos had bought the bakery site at 74 Witherspoon Street after the previous tenant, Toto's, a butcher's shop, decided to sell. Although another bakery, Landolfie's, had once been on the same site, the building was not suited for baking. Landolfie's had only used the site as a front — the bread had been baked elsewhere. In New Jersey, baking is classified as manufacturing. The Momos found this ridiculous, but they had no choice but to renovate the site in line with manufacturing building code standards. The building and the review process took over 18 months, but finally the bakery opened in 1998.
Even after the opening, ensued another round of bureaucratic review when Granarolo requested that the cooler box be moved outside. Just to move the cooler, engineers had to approve the site plan and the retaining wall had to be excavated. Carlo Momo recalled that during the excavation of the wall, the construction workers "found a bunch of cow bones," presumably from the era of Toto's butcher shop.
There were unforeseen regulatory issues as well. Carlo Momo angrily recalled how there was a dispute over the display of sandwiches. After a food safety inspection, the bakery was told that it had to have its sandwiches kept at a cool temperature within a deli counter. This ruined the taste of certain sandwiches, like the frittata (an Italian omelet), which would get too moist at cool temperatures and was best consumed warm. The possibility of food spoilage was cited, but the Momos rejected this reasoning, pointing out that the sandwiches usually sold out within the first few hours, and that there were no problems with open-air display in Europe. Furthermore, they noticed that Wegman's displayed its sandwiches at ambient temperatures, so they didn't see why the bakery had to do otherwise. It turned out that the Wegman's had applied for and received a special permit to have its sandwiches out in open air. The Momos didn't feel that it was worth it to press the issue, or to go through the process of getting the permit, but such encounters with regulating agencies frustrated them and made them feel that American regulations unfairly penalized small businesses. The sandwich issue especially rankled, because to the Momos it represented how large corporations had the clout and the money to bend the rules, even though those very rules were designed with large corporations in mind.
Nevertheless, the bakery did phenomenally well for two years, and the Momos were proud of that success, for they knew that Americans didn't have a habit of buying fresh bread daily. Unfortunately, the period of unqualified success ended abruptly when Witherspoon St. and part of the sidewalk were closed during a Princeton Public Library renovation and the construction of a parking garage.
"The construction couldn't [have] come at a worse time," Carlo Momo said. Few customers were willing to park a block away and walk over just for a loaf of bread. The ritual of buying daily bread that Momos hoped to encourage was vulnerable, for it depended on convenient street-level access to the bakery. Customers who made the extra effort to come by the bakery may have been discouraged by the sight of port-a-potties and grease trucks. "It didn't exactly provide the best visuals," Carlo Momo said, disgusted.
Even after the street re-opened, the bakery never recovered to pre-construction levels of business. By this time the bakery also had more competition: Panera, Wegman's, McCaffrey's and Whole Foods, and a rival independent bakery, The Little Chef. The Momos felt that the opening of Witherspoon Bread Co. was part of a recent renaissance of interest in artisanal foods. Corporate chains made changes to cash in on that revival, but their competition often killed off the independent, Mom-and-Pop businesses that inspired the renaissance in the first place. The Momos see this as a bitter cosmic irony. It is an old pattern — the pioneer being driven out of their own territory.
For each person that eats in one of the Terra Momo restaurants, the bakery earns $0.35. Even so, these days the bakery is only breaking even. The Momos say that without the subsidy of the Terra Momo group restaurants, the bakery would have gone out of business in the difficult times during the closing of the street. It was only after the business was hurt by closing of the street that the Momos brought in the fancy packaging and free magnets. The bakery needed help getting back on its feet, so Terra Momo threw the weight of its marketing resources behind it.
Carlo Momo stresses, more than once, that Terra Momo continues to support the bakery even though it is economically inefficient to do so. The way he puts it, it was as if the Momos had brought Granarolo in from France as a favor to Princeton, and that this favor had not been totally appreciated. The Momos repeatedly emphasize how (1) they have values and priorities beyond just making a profit, and (2) that these values make their restaurants different and better than the larger, more powerful corporate chains. They are sincere, but it is also clear that the Momos make a point of it to appeal to customers who share those values.
Artisanal bakeries are the norm in France, where bread is a staple, one of the backbones of the Continental diet along with wine and cheese. "In France, bread is a basic meal. If you don't eat meat, you eat bread. You can't have a meal without bread," Granarolo says. He became a baker in part because he enjoyed good bread and pastry.
After he graduated from his high school in France, he was slated to go into dentistry. However, he didn't like dentistry and enjoyed his first job at a bakery more. Commercial baking in France required a diploma, so Granarolo attended La Colline in Montpellier for two years, receiving instruction and an apprenticeship.
He opened his first bakery in the French village of Bastide Puylaurant-Lozere. Later, he moved to Paris, opening his second bakery there. Each location was moderately successful, but didn't leave Granarolo with much money left over. He began to think of migrating to America. Looking for a suitable location, he scouted out New York, Dallas, Fredricksburg, Chicago and other cities, keeping in mind that he had two kids to raise. He rejected big city environments. "My kids didn't like Paris. They were born in the country." In 1993 Granarolo attended a baking conference in Las Vegas. There, he met Olivier Frot, owner of F.B.M. Baking Machines, Inc., a vendor of professional baking equipment, based in Cranbury, NJ. Frot suggested that Granarolo visit Princeton, and introduced Granarolo to the Momos. After one visit to Princeton, Granarolo made up his mind. "I knew I had to open a bakery here," he says. "I fell in love with Princeton."
On opening day, Witherspoon Bread Co. was swamped with business. Coming to America, Granarolo knew he would have to work hard. But he also hoped that in America, his work would pay off, and it did. "In France, I work for twenty years, I don't have anything. Here, after two years, I buy a house," Granarolo recalls.
After seven years here, he continues to enjoy living in Princeton. His kids prefer America to France. His son is now 19, his daughter 17. They were 13 and 10 when the family moved to Princeton. In one year, they learned to speak English fluently. Here, "they have a way to make kids at ease and more confident," Granarolo says, and explains that his kids used to be shy, but opened up after living in the States.
Granarolo also likes his customers, finding them to be cosmopolitan and welcoming to strangers, more open-minded than people in Europe. "When they learn that I am French, they try to remember what [French] they learned in high school." It isn't too hard to realize that Granarolo is French. His accent is revealing, he still mutters to himself in French, and exhibits a Gallic sensibility towards good food. And he continues to use metric, because he prefers it to the illogical intricacies of English measures. "That is the only thing you [Americans] have to do here — go metric," he says with a smile.
Denis Granarolo is full-bloodedly a baker out of the old world, yet personally embraces the new world, the place he lives and works. His bakery's business history is an illumination of the state of artisan craft in America today. Even though America has intermittently expressed an interest in the European way of life, Witherspoon Bread Co. is still an anomaly in an age when most of the food we eat is neither fresh nor hand-produced.
Yet each of us still has an image of the prototypical baker, known to us from nursery rhymes and stories. The butcher, the baker, the candle-stick-maker. Perhaps it is a comfort to know on Sunday and Monday nights, down Witherspoon St. there is a baker like the one we imagine, wearing a wrinkled white apron, his hands working the dough, working diligently so that the bakery shelves will be filled with golden loaves of bread by dawn, to be nearly emptied by dusk.