PROVO -- The bread is baked fresh daily, using baking techniques that are hundreds of years old.
Traditional European hearth breads are one of the specialties of Hearthstone Bakery, which opened seven months ago at 3376 N. University Ave. These breads, which contain no yeast, added fat or preservatives, are made with a natural leavening similar to that used for sourdough bread.A large specialized oven imported from France gives the breads their signature hard crust and soft, chewy inside. The breads are cooked without pans on large, flat stone surfaces inside the oven at more than 500 degrees. A 2-pound loaf cooks in about 20 minutes, and the oven can bake about 90 loaves at once. The push of a button injects steam into the oven, helping create the hard crust.
Breads available include rustic French bread, one of the bakery's most popular hearth breads, and the traditional
French baguette, a long, skinny loaf. Cibatta, or slipper bread, is a common Italian bread used for dipping in olive oils or vinegars or eaten with pastas. Another Italian bread, foccacia, is rubbed with olive oil and topped with tomatoes, onions, cheese and herbs before baking. Foccacia is the forerunner of pizza, said Hearthstone owner Steve Pitts.
"Our goal is to produce the highest quality product," Pitts said.
This goal extends to the bakery's many other products that may be more familiar to American consumers, such as butterflake rolls, croissants, bagels and traditional white and wheat pan breads. Also produced are desserts such as eclairs, carrot cake, German chocolate cake and cheesecakes.
Hearthstone also operates as a cafe, with a seating area in front where customers can eat sandwiches made with the bakery's breads. Various dips and spreads are also available for the breads.
"One of the things we kind of have to fight is just people not being familiar with the breads," Pitts said. A tasting area at the front counter helps overcome this, allowing customers to sample various breads.
Hearthstone currently employs four full-time bakers, with Pitts filling in as needed. Virtually everything is produced from scratch. In its hearth breads, Hearthstone uses unbleached, unbromated flour that is coarser than flour commonly found in the supermarket. The dough is made the day before it will be baked; the loaves are left in a refrigerator overnight to rise. This adds flavor to the bread because the natural leaven is based on fermentation; just like wine, the taste improves when it has fermented longer, said Jared Westercamp, Hearthstone head baker.
To make hearth breads, a bakery has to have the right equipment and people with the right skills, Pitts said. "It's a different type of baking," he said, although it's probably one of the oldest trades in the world. A loaf of bread at Hearthstone may cost more than one bought at the grocery store, Pitts said, but he pointed out that a hearth bread loaf plus one other item equals a substantial meal. "You can feed a family on a loaf of bread like that," he said.
When not baking hearth breads, Hearthstone uses a rack oven big enough to walk inside. Items are placed on a metal rack, which is wheeled inside and attached to a mechanism at the top of the oven. The oven spins the entire rack during baking and hot air is blown around the items. "It's like a giant convection oven," Pitts said. This oven is big enough to bake 1,000 muffins at one time. "Between these two ovens, you can make anything known to man, basically," Pitts said. Pitts and his wife, Gina, researched bread making before opening Hearthstone, traveling to the American Institute of Baking in Kansas and taking classes at the San Francisco Institute of Baking. Pitts said they wanted to produce an experience for customers that they would tell other people about.
Response from customers has been good so far, Pitts said. Hearthstone has been building a new location at 315 E. 400 South in Springville, which will open at the beginning of October, and there are plans for other locations in the future.
The Deseret News regularly features stories on businesses that create or produce products in Utah County for the retail market. Got a story idea? Call 437-7602 or e-mail Sharon Haddock at haddoc@desnews.com.