Weaver Street Market bakers bring unique experience to bread process

Bread is a staple food in most diets: sweet or savory, sandwiched or toasted, it is guaranteed to be eaten frequently. But despite its simplicity in our minds, it is deceptively difficult to make and requires hours of heating, cooling and fermenting to get the desired flavor and variety. 

The bread baking team at Weaver Street Market begins their day around 2 a.m. 

Once the bakers get to the kitchen, it is an intricate process to produce the quantity of bread they make, head baker Jon McDonald said. One person mixes doughs and three to four people shape the dough before either going into a proofer — if the loaf is to be baked that day — or a retarder, which slows down the bread fermentation process. After packing and bringing the daily bread to the Weaver Street shelves, it all resets.

“[It's a] perpetual motion machine,” McDonald said.

Weaver Street Market is a cherished grocery and community space for the Chapel Hill-Carrboro area, especially for McDonald. A UNC graduate himself, McDonald spent time around Weaver Street in college, whether it was eating lunch or just sitting on the lawn. With a degree in creative writing and English, McDonald hoped to make it in the publishing world. 

Between his junior and senior year, McDonald took a job in the bread department, believing it was just a summer stint. But after graduating, the bakery remained at the forefront of his mind. The economy was failing from the Great Recession, and McDonald's publishing contacts in New York City had dried up. 

“I had really loved [bread baking] too,” McDonald said. “I really loved the physical nature of the work, you get to work with a lot of different people from different slices of life, and so I went back.”

When it came to mastering the art of bread baking, McDonald learned on the job. As one of the first artisan bakeries in North Carolina, Weaver Street was on the forefront of long-form fermentation, a key technique in making sourdough. Because of this, Weaver Street attracted expert bakers eager to teach newcomers like McDonald. 

Currently, the bread baking team includes workers with different ranges of experience.

Alix Siek had around three years of bread experience before coming to Weaver Street. She worked in a small sandwich and pasta shop in St. Louis, Missouri.

“I didn’t learn a ton, but I learned the basics, and I realized that I don’t mind the monotony of bread work that bothers a lot of people,” Siek said.

Keith Penich came to North Carolina for graduate school at UNC. After completing a PhD in classics, he tested the job market for a couple years, but like McDonald, was drawn to Weaver Street’s bakery. His only experience baking bread was from his own kitchen.

“I started July 2021, and I’ve learned a ton in three years,” Penich said. “You know bread so much better after [working in a bakery].”

Weaver Street is a worker and consumer-owned cooperative, an aspect that draws bakers in and keeps them there. 

“I did not set out imagining to be a career Weaver Street employee, but from a working point of view, if you want to be involved in food service, you’re not going to find a better place that’s gonna value you as an individual and as a human above everything else,” McDonald said. 

Siek said that being a baker is not easy; the hours are long and the work is physical, but working in an environment like Weaver Street makes the process incredibly gratifying and fulfilling.

Beyond Weaver Street Market itself, the bakery and bakers play a prominent role in other stores, something that fewer and fewer institutions can do. 

“Being a part of something that the community really values and something that hopefully nourishes them, that’s what brings us all back every day,” McDonald said. 

@dthlifestyle | lifestyle@dailytarheel.com