The last few times I've visited my parents' house, they've served some incredible breads from a local bakery. One time we had a roasted garlic-parmesan loaf that was to die for. This time we had an organic white sourdough with the most beautiful gringe and crust on it. The next morning for breakfast we had an organic cranberry-walnut sourdough that knocked my socks off. After finishing off an entire loaf of cranberry-walnut bread in one sitting, I thought to myself "I gotta go check this place out."
Pane D'Amore is in a teeny little storefront in uptown Port Townsend. Going by mid-day on the day before Easter was probably not the smartest idea of mine because the place was packed, so I didn't get a chance to talk to the bakery owners Frank D'Amore and Linda Yakush. But I was lucky enough to catch one of the bakers there, Ilon Silverman, as he was wrapping up for the day. He gave me a tour of the place and told me about his baking background.
Ilon told me he's been baking for close to 20 years. He got into bread baking, he said, when he first heard about baking sourdough loaves without yeast while in high school. "My initial tries came out like bricks", he told me, but he stuck with it and was eventually able to get the hang of it.
Ilon was able to get his foot in the door as a professional baker at The Berkshire Mountain Bakery in Massachusetts, getting to apprentice under the master baker Richard Bourdon. Later he landed a gig at the renowned Metropolitan Bakery in Philadelphia.
When I asked what brought him to Washington he told me a funny story. "I was out here checking out the Olympic Peninsula," he said, "when one morning I smelled bread. And not just any old bakery, but, you know, real bread." He went into Pane D'Amore and chatted with the guys for a bit, then asked if could come in and help bake the next day. So for the next two days (on his vacation, I remind you), he got up at 3 in the morning and put in a full (unpaid) shift at Pane D'Amore.
After returning to Colorado, Ilon heard that Pane D'Amore owner and head baker Frank D'Amore had been seriously injured in an accident and that the bakery needed help covering for him. Ilon called up the bakery, saying "Hey, you might have forgotten me, but I'm the guy who came in and baked with you on my vacation." He ended up coming back out to Washington to help cover for Frank while he was out of commission.
Frank D'Amore, who has been baking in Port Townsend for over 25 years, is back baking again and the bakery, which is about four years old, is going strong. The under 900 square foot joint (including the retail space) does about a thousand pounds of bread a day, with anywhere from ten to twenty different types of bread each day. All of the bread is made with organic ingredients, not just the flour but the nuts, seeds, and fruits as well. In the summertime, when the farmers' market is going on out front, the line will be out the door and they'll sell over 400 loaves of bread from the storefont alone. Pane D'Amore's breads are served at a number of local restaurants and has recently been picked up by the Safeway in town, which is the largest bread seller in the area by far.
The breads they make there are killer: aside from the ones I mentioned, they make a Fig-Anise Bread, Ciabatta, Swedish Limpa, a Flax, Oat, and Sunflower Multi-grain Bread, a 7 Grain, Panini, rolls, Ficelle and many others. About half of the breads they bake are sourdoughs, the other half yeasted. They also bake pastries, rolls, sticky buns, cinnamon rolls, cookies, focaccia, and pretty much anything else you can bake in a hot oven every day.
Pane D'Amore is located at 617 Tyler St., Port Townsend, Washington and is open 7 days a week.
Bakery Profile: Pane D'Amore
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Comments
...makes me want to go to Washington just to taste their bread!
One correction Floydm - The Berkshire Mountain Bakery is in Massachusetts, not Vermont as you have listed up there. I know because I live about 5 miles from it. It is the biggest supplier of sourdough bread in the Southern Berkshers - and a great bakery in its own right!
You must have spotted this in the RSS feed... I posted it tonight but wasn't going to put it on the front page until I had a chance to reread it to try to catch any errors. You spotted a good one, so thank you for the correction.
I'm going to go ahead and place this story on the front page, so if you or anyone else catch any other errors (factual or grammatical), please let me know.
Berkshire Mountain Bakery sounds like a great bakery.
Floyd,
I enjoyed your interview with the baker and your special insight of this great family run business. It looks like a successful small business at 1000 pounds a day. That seems like a doable amount to me with minimum equipment. I was surprised at the number of kinds of bread they produce every day. What a fire drill!
By the way I bought some of the garlic spray from Garlic Valley (advertiser) and loved it. We made Garlic bread last week from baguettes and it was delicious and fast!
Eric
OMG,if only we had something like that here. A very interesting article, Floyd.
Wow. Beautiful photos and write-up. When I get to the West Coast in August, I'll be making a pilgrimage.
And I loved the slide show. Looks like a very cool place, and their product is outstanding.
Thanks for going behind the scenes to share with us.
Another reason to love the Olympic Penninsula! What a jewel of a small bakery. Those organic sourdough loaves look incredible, the crust and the ears are what I wish I could achieve, the photos make me really hungry...I will definitely scope this place out next time we are out in Washington. Thanks Floyd!
Unless I traveled an hour, at least, the "Artisan Bread" I would find around here would have an ingredient list 2" long and be almost unreadable. What a joy it would be to run up to Pane D' Amore. Thanks Floyd. weavershouse
I wish I lived anywhere close to this place... I'm in South-Central WA.... but dfinitely if I go towards the coast sometime, I'd loooooooooooove to stop by....
Hmmm. If I lived there I would actually apply for the job.... just for the fun of it :)
Thanks Floyd
...and thanks for sharing that info and photos - breathtaking. There is so obviously something that gets into your blood when you discover bread baking. It is insane - such an obssession that you can't shake off but even moreso you don't wish to. I love these kind of stories and can only imagine how hard these people work to make exceptional bread on that level. Wow.
how artisan bakers can make a living. Most definitely an art form, requires very specialized experience to produce such variety, quality and quantity, highly physical, bad hours and not the best of pay. It must have to do with that obsession we have all been talking about! Thanks for the review and slide show, really enjoyed it.
I also, tried to leave a rating, but it wouldn't take.
Yeah, I think the slideshow javascript and the rating javascript conflict with one another. I'll see if I can fix it.
You are always there..Thanks for all you do
Wow!
Super clean bakery space and such good looking product! But where is Port Townsend?
is in Washington state
Junglis,
I reckon that if your business increased in volume output some things would be compromised. I've seen it happen often to cafes and restaurants here (NZ), especially if it means that you have to train your own staff to maintain your established standards (as I have to in my cafe).
Would you consider posting up any bread recipes which you have saturated the locals with and can now afford to give away?
to Junglis,
Yes, I agree with all you say. The passion is there because we are all nurturers and we want to provide sustinance for those we respect/love with the best efforts we are capable of. Good luck with your staff interviewing, I hope you find someone with a similar attitude to breadmaking and life as you. What I have found in my 11 years of cafe management (and cooking)( and 15 years of hospital food service management) is that one's enthusiasm (read passion) can rub off on new staff (if you are lucky) and you progress from there. M
Just to chime in from the other side of the Atlantic Ocean:
I find your sense of scale rather funny. A bakery that sells 1000 pounds of bread over here in Belgium is by no means a small bakery.
While I personally like what I saw in the pictures, you'd have a hard time to sell bread with such dark crust over here. People tend to prefer it less baked.
When I was still an apprentice (back in the 80's) I always dreamed of crossing over to the States and get real successful with european-style bread and pastry. Judging from what I see here (on this site in general) that would have been a good move ;-)
Bart
I think it's just the picture shows dark loaves due to lack of light, lack of bright lights that would dry out the bread. As we all know, taking a photo of bread is not all that easy. The buns in the front look perfectly baked! The slide show is beautiful, Thank you --Mini Oven
Junglis - just keep doing what you are doing. You'd do well here in an NZ city
situation. My opinion is that if Floyd thought your bakery was worth promoting to the degree that he has, then you are an inspiration to us! Mini
Oven writes sense too.
to have Frank and Junglis come on this site!
Your bakery - and breads - look amazing! What an inspiration to those of us just learning in our home kitchens. I am on the east coast but if I ever get out your way I would absolutely LOVE a tour of the bakery!
Thank you.
Do you think they have a bread recipe book for sale?
not sure if I would still bake my own bread, if this bakery would be around (closeby). Nice pictures, nice limpa as well. What are the prices of the bread?
Cheers,
Jw.