She said we could not meet on Tuesday.  The power had gone out and left her with a table load of half shaped dough.  In the photo, the candle lit up the room sufficiently, a pine tree of bees wax set in a shallow bowl painted blue with flowers.  Behind the glare popped small red tulips stenciled along the wall, a border around the window.  A few baked loaves rested on the metal shelf behind the long wooden table.  I had been there before.  Not to her house, or shop, but that place where a weeks worth of planning goes out the window because the power went out.  That place where you are left to hustle a load of dough, that is running off with you on a ninety degree night, and the coolers don’t work.  That place where you have to abandon the plan and on the fly come up with something else.  It’s the spontaneous pivot, a spin and a hail mary when you have to get bread to people you promised, but things aren’t looking hopeful.  It ends up being an all nighter.

The week before, I was making yogurt and she was making yogurt.  I reached out on a whim.  Her name is Linn Bjornland and she is a new bread lady in town.  I had heard of her through the small town grapevine and seen her farm stand, astute, outside the front of her house, BLUE BELL BAKEHOUSE, painted in corn flower blue.  I had not thought to reach out because as a bread lady, I am not often searching out bread, but the coincidence of us making homemade yogurt in a shop built for bread had me curious for a chat.  Since Tuesday had not worked out, we planned for Thursday.  

Thursday was cloudy.  After a summer of blue skies and ninety degree temps, the clouds fooled me into thinking a change of season was afoot.  I was set straight again upon entering the bakehouse.  The heat was as thick as the smell of fresh baked bread and I felt at home.   I was greeted by Linn and her husband and baking partner, Christian, along with their three year old daughter, a big white dog and a peculiar silky chicken named Meredith. 

Bluebell Bakehouse is a home kitchen set up, also known as a cottage food operation.  The bakeshop is attached to the house and the baking and business operations run alongside taking care of the kids and household chores and activities.  It is unique, as it encourages a certain amount of creativity to become efficient and physically and financially sustainable.  It is not the same as running a commercial kitchen.  It is not a given kitchen space equipped with fancy tools.  On the contrary, it is an adapted space that is outfitted to the best of it’s ability, without sufficient three phase power to run a big mixer or keep a walk in cool, and without enough BTUs of gas to keep a large deck oven running.  It is not large enough to run a bake of a few hundred loaves at a time, but instead, bread is made in small batches, mixed and shaped by hand and baked off over extended hours morning and night.  The luxury of such an operation, is the ability to take a quick ten minute nap on the living room couch while bread is baking, but overall, that is a very small luxury when the work days run into nights which run into mornings with little sleep and no end in sight.  

Apart from my own work, there are not many baking operations like this in town.  Since I closed shop, most of the bread I hear about comes from the grocery stores and a couple of restaurants baking off twenty of so loaves of bread a day.  In these scenarios, the bread is not the focus but a side product, and the love of baking is overridden by hectic and unhealthy work environments.  This is not the case at Bluebell Bakehouse.  The bread is the focus.  All attention is on the dough, the ferment, the shaping and the baking.  It is also on the presentation, the delivery and the connection with costumers, who ultimately feel the same connection to the bread as the baker herself.  

Linn is Norwegian.  She comes from a small island in Norway where making homemade things was part of her culture.  She excitedly talks about making pickles, and yogurt and cheeses.  She mentions the Norwegian pastries with cardamum and brioche buns with cream, dusted with sugar and coconut for the school kids.  As we talk she twists dough with chocolate and flaky salt into chocolate buns for an afternoon delivery to her bread stand across town.  She seems in her element, her home, working with her husband and raising her children.  

Bread bakers often come to bread after living another life first. They find a sense of purpose in the work.  It is creative, physical, nostalgic and healing.  It also offers a beautiful way to connect and contribute to community.  I would say this theory aligns well with Linn and Christian.  Bread was not their first endeavor although creativity and art seems to be a running theme through their work.  Linn began a career in the Norwegian National Ballet before becoming an actress.  Christian is a writer and as Linn says, an artist in all ways with paint on canvas and food in the kitchen.  They went on to work in a corporate setting that didn’t resonate with either of them but ultimately allowed them freedom to travel for a few years before settling back in California with a desire to do something different.  As Christian explains, they were at a crossroads.  “ We are creative people.  We want to do something big.  We want to do something good for people and this is possibly our last chance to do this. We are moving on to new territory, the only question was, what is it going to be?”  

Linn starting baking bread during covid.  I joke with her that she was a covid baker.  She snickers back, but says “well, yes.”  She started baking bread when she got gestational diabetes during pregnancy.  She found that sourdough was the only bread that did not spike her blood sugar.  She also says she and Christian have lost weight since opening a bakery.  We laugh, as the reality in that is not the slimming sourdough effect but the long hours on your feet and fifty pound bags of flour.  Needless to say, sourdough is healthy, whether you are eating it or making it.  

They started selling their bread a couple years ago to markets and schools, heavily relying on wholesale orders that brought in high orders but not enough money to balance out the physical labor and long hours that came along with high production in a small bake space.  Linn bakes out of a Simply Bread, compact deck oven equipped with three stones and a bake capacity of twelve sourdough loaves. At their peak wholesale production they were baking one hundred and fifty loaves a day, roughly forty minutes a bake.  Do the math.  It is not sustainable.  This realization often comes after a committed effort to get your name out there, distribute your product and get people to buy you out daily.  You bake more then you can physically handle, sell your product for less than it is worth and eventually burn out.  Then you rethink.  Maybe bake less and ask more.  Maybe don’t sell wholesale.  Maybe don’t deliver and have people come to you.  Now with a steady handle on the bread and production, the business model can be reevaluated.  Today, Bluebell Bakehouse sells their bread at their personal bread stands in numerous locations around town and focuses on Farmer’s Markets.  

I ask them if they feel overwhelmed.  The answer is a resounding, YES.  They say it is the hardest thing they have ever done; beyond Linn’s career as a professional ballerina and beyond Christian’s work on the tall ships in his younger years.  Christian has taken over all of the hand mixing to take the burden off of Linn.  They divide and conquer when they can, one baking and staying in the shop while the other goes off to markets.  They both crash on the couch after a long days work.  The afternoon nap after Sunday market defines the cottage food baker.  

Bluebell is reaching the point when a decision to grow and expand into a commercial baking space or stay small becomes paramount.  The cottage food model only works to a certain degree.   There are regulations for how much you can produce and how much profit you can make yearly.  It is often hard to add new products due to rules and regulations.  If you decide to grow and get bigger, there is a whole new set of obstacles and commitments.  You have to weigh out the need for staff and there is a loss of freedom and time with your family.  Linn and Christian are weighing there options but I find them leaning toward anything that will keep them close to their children and deeply creative.  

A baker in town once told me that I was an artist in my bread shop, not a production baker.  He said it was two very different things.  I wonder if the same rings true for Linn and Christian.  I watched Linn barefoot on the floor.  As she scored the loaves that balanced on the proofing board set on the bench, her toes pointed gracefully off to the side.  On point, perhaps, always about to dance.  Christian stood by the window with colored markets and paper market bags, making decorative designs across the top of each bag.  Linn says the salt in the chocolate buns were his idea.  The salt sets the bun apart.  She says he plays with flavors.  I took another bite and it hit just right.  

I took too much of their time on Thursday.  The shop had us in a good sweat and the warm clouds outside brought a mist of rain.  I appreciated the conversation, as our philosophies around baking and feeding people mirrored each other, as did our desire as parents to be with our children as much as possible.  As bakers, we chose to bake from our homes as our homes represent the part of us that is creative and nurturing.  I think this says a lot about why our bread tastes the way it does.  I think it says a lot for why cottage food bakeries offer a feeling of nostalgia for so many people.  It is an old school way of baking.  I still wonder if it is financially viable as the trade off for making money is a deep physical and mental exhaustion.  It takes it’s toll, but maybe, as partners, Linn and Christian can make it work.  

I left with a handful of passionfruit and a farewell from Meredith the chicken on the front porch day bed.  Linn texted the next day and said she and Christian had forgotten their wedding anniversary the day before.  It the thick of oven heat, humid clouds, animals, kids and too much dough, it was just another day.  In the thick of living and baking together it didn’t seem to matter.  They are in it all, together, every day.