Chatting with Mark Hart, head baker at Anita's Bread and Coffee, about guitar, obsession and panettone.
Hey! We see you in the bakery all the time, but it’s nice to sit down and get to know more about you! we’re a big fan of yours obviously :) Why don’t you start by telling us what first got you interested in being in the kitchen?
I was the youngest child, so I stayed home with my mom, and she made dessert every single day from scratch! I remember her making tons of cookies and friendship bread. Also, I became a vegetarian at 12 years old, which meant I needed to do a lot of my own cooking. This is really the age I started spending a lot of time in the kitchen.
What was your first foray into baking on your own?
My bread journey started around 15 years ago. A friend of mine gave me a no-knead bread recipe and I got totally hooked after making it. I remember lifting the cast iron lid after taking it out of the oven and thinking, “This is insane! I just made this?! It looks incredible!” Now, I’m sure if I made bread that turned out like my first loaf did I would be so disappointed. At the time though, I was so inspired to make the best loaf. I was about 25 years old, living in Toronto, my wife was gone during the day working on her PhD, I was teaching guitar and in a band, so I worked evenings and weekends. During the day I just baked SO much bread. I was obsessed. That’s my personality though, when I’m interested in something I am all in, totally committed.
How did the infamous Mark’s Bread come to be?
My wife got a job offer in BC and we decided to move to Abbotsford, and soon after that, to Chilliwack. I started baking obsessively again. I was at home with my youngest daughter and would make like 60 loaves a day. I started “Mark’s Bread” on Instagram and had a lot of positive feedback with people wanting to buy my bread. This is when my daughter and I started to deliver bread around Abbotsford and Chilliwack. I would also sell baked goods at the funfair and markets. I would even bring bread to the homeless camp nearby where we were living because I just had so much bread!
We’re there any people that really inspired you along the journey?
My friend started the bakery Polestar Hearth in Guelph. He was the one who first inspired me to build a wood-fired oven. He actually is one of my biggest baking inspirations. I met him at this amazing guitar repair shop that I used to go to. We got to know each other and then he hired me to be a guitar teacher at the store. He eventually left to build a wood-fired oven in his backyard. I remember seeing this really cool, artsy video of him and another guy at their bakery in Guelph, making bread with a wood-fired oven in the morning. That was when I decided that I wanted to build my own wood-fired oven.
Many people around here remember your outdoor wood-fired oven!
Ya, Mark’s Bread was at full capacity at this point and I knew I needed a better system than baking the amount of bread that I was out of my home oven. I had this wild idea to make a wood-fired oven. A friend of mine connected me with the Blackbird Farms in Chilliwack, and they agreed to let me build a wood-fired oven on their property if I paid for the materials. I was already using Anita’s flour at this point, so after winning an Instagram contest, I started using their products more regularly. Anita’s really started to support me around that point. They helped pay for the materials to make the oven and provided me with Anita’s products. It was a huge undertaking to learn how to build the oven from scratch! Once I finished building it I started making even more bread, like 100 loaves at a time!
Baking [a lot] in my home kitchen when I just started out!
The wood-fired oven I built at Blackbird Farms in Chilliwack
DO YOU HAVE ANY NICKNAMES?
When I first moved to Chilliwack and was selling my baking out of the Bread Shed in my backyard, I remember walking down the sidewalk in my neighbourhood and someone saying to me, “Hey you’re the Bread Man!” I thought that was pretty awesome.
DO YOU HAVE A RITUAL OR ROUTINE THAT GOES ALONG WITH YOUR BAKING?
Not at all! I am a very particular person, but I don’t operate based on organized methods of any kind. It’s just not how my brain works best. I don’t measure, I don’t take notes, I am just really not scientific about it all. I am always trying to make my recipes better, so everytime I make a recipe, it’s different. Sometimes it ends in disaster...well, pretty often. But then through that I find something better than the time before. Baking for me is one big, fun experiment of trial and error.
SO, IT’S SAFE TO SAY BAKING IS AN OBSESSION FOR YOU!
It’s definitely an obsession, but I think it’s rooted in challenge and problem solving. I really like to look at something and figure out how to bake it, and how to make it taste delicious! The whole thing for me is the finished product. It’s like the first loaf of no-knead bread I made, I was so amazed that I created that! I also love sharing what I make with others and seeing them get just as excited as me about how well it turned out.
Anita’s Bread & Coffee Almond Croissant
“Since Anita’s Bread and Coffee has opened, I have been busier than ever and am still obsessed with making bread!”
Ok, we had to ask, favourite thing to bake!
Panettone! It’s an Italian Christmas loaf from the Milan region. It’s a sweet bread that is quite light and fluffy, and full of candied and dried fruits. It’s really delicious! The recipe that’s taken me some time to figure out because there are just so…many…steps. It’s well worth it though!
Fast forward to today, and you’re running a busy cafe and bakery with us!
When Anita’s had the idea of opening a bakery, I was excited to partner up with them! Before Anita’s Bread and Coffee was officially opened, I spent a lot of time in the test kitchen creating and testing different recipes. I even got to take some courses through The Bread Lab in Washington which was a really enlightening experience! When the Anita’s Bakery opening was delayed I had the opportunity to spend a week working in my friend’s bakery, Polestar Hearth, in Guelph, Ontario. Since Anita’s Bread and Coffee has opened, I have been busier than ever and am still obsessed with making bread!