Calgary Herald

MAKING DOUGH AT GRAINZ

City’s top bread baker back in business

- JOHN GILCHRIST John Gilchrist can be reached at escurial@telus.net or follow him on Twitter @GilchristJ­ohn

The yeast whisperer is back in business.

Teddi Smith, Calgary’s foremost bread baker, is once again bringing her artisan breads and lively yeasts to Calgarians at her new Grainz Bread Shop in Tull Business Park at 5330 72nd Ave. S.E. And she’s happy to be elbowdeep in dough once again.

Smith, who formerly ran Wild Grainz in Inglewood, has spent the past three years teaching baking at Lester B. Pearson High School, sharing her skills with dozens of young bakers. Prior to both endeavours, she taught baking at SAIT, enlighteni­ng many student minds to the workings of yeast and gluten.

One of the first things Smith teaches is how to build your own sourdough starter from natural, airborne yeasts in our environmen­t. The yeasty starter she uses at Grainz is now nine years old, dating back to her early days in Inglewood. It’s a storied starter; when Smith was evacuated from her 9th Avenue shop during the 2013 flood, she left without it. But not wanting to abandon her yeasts, she talked her way back to the area, braving rising waters, and rescued the doughy mass.

When the Inglewood lease expired, Smith dehydrated her starter and put it in storage. And then, three years later, she coaxed it back to life at her new location. So patrons can still have a taste of Inglewood, even in Starfield Industrial Estate.

But isn’t Starfield, with its abundance of chain outlets, an odd place for an artisan bread shop that uses natural yeasts and a three-day process to create a loaf of bread? “Traffic here is huge,” says Smith. “And a lot of people are looking for something different from what the chains offer. Plus many of my Inglewood customers are finding me here. But the main thing is that rent is so much cheaper I can sell my breads for way less than I could in Inglewood.”

Grainz is located behind McDonalds and Wonton King on the northeast corner of 52nd Street and 72nd Avenue S.E. With the new overpass on Glenmore Trail, it took me about 20 minutes to drive from Southcentr­e Mall to Grainz.

And it was so worth the drive for Smith’s loaves of perfectly baked sourdough ($6), croissants ($2.50), salt-crusted pretzels ($2), pain au chocolate ($3) and more. She prepares calzones ($6) and focaccia ($3 and $5) for the lunch crowd and crusty loaves for the take-home visitors. There are seasonal specialtie­s, such as Easter’s hot cross buns and sprouted red fife loaves on Saturday. Plus fruit pies, handcrafte­d jams, and fresh pizza dough on order. She’ll be setting up some baking classes in her shop — with its high-tech, triple-deck MIWE oven — soon.

Smith realizes that not all of her customers will be able to get to her shop so she offers delivery on Saturdays to Inglewood for $5 and around the city for $15. She’s also launching a wholesale business — her baking is available in Rosso Coffee — and offers catering options, too.

Grainz Bread Shop is open Tuesday through Sunday from 7 a.m. to 5 p.m. (587-620-8850).

Also in the world of catering, Michael Noble has launched Noble Fare (noblefarec­atering.com) to customize menus for corporate events, weddings and private parties. While his Notable and The Nash restaurant­s have always done catering, Noble sees this new endeavour as a full-bodied formalizat­ion of the business and the last cornerston­e of his food empire.

The Nash has a large downstairs prep kitchen that sits empty much of the time so it’s been repurposed as the catering kitchen under the supervisio­n of Nash sous chef Richard Pilkington and Noble himself.

As Noble says, “You celebrate. We cook.” And he’s aiming Noble Fare at all levels of celebratio­ns. For $25 per person, you can pick up a fine rotisserie chicken dinner with vegetables and salads in takeout trays. The business ramps up from there to a full drop-off service with a large menu and options of cutlery, plateware, servers and on-site cooks. And then you can go full bore with multi-course sit-down dinners and complete event planning under the direction of Laura Noble. You can choose your own venue or work with Noble Fare in one of their preferred spaces, such as the new cSpace in King Edward School.

Noble Fare is a multi-faceted approach to broadening Noble’s business and keeping it healthy in an ever-changing environmen­t. Noble says his restaurant business is up from last year in both patrons and revenues, but with increases in salaries, taxes and food costs, he’s about even with where he was in 2017. And it doesn’t look like those costs will get any cheaper any time soon. So diversific­ation is the key.

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 ?? PHOTOS: JIM WELLS ?? Apprentice Katie Sypher, left, and owner Teddi Smith make sourdough loaves at Grainz Bread Shop, which turns out a plethora of artisan delights.
PHOTOS: JIM WELLS Apprentice Katie Sypher, left, and owner Teddi Smith make sourdough loaves at Grainz Bread Shop, which turns out a plethora of artisan delights.
 ??  ?? Raspberry cream cheese danishes are among the sweet treats at Grainz.
Raspberry cream cheese danishes are among the sweet treats at Grainz.
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