Can bread be artisan and produced in large enough quantities to be sold all over the country?
If you’re asking the bread-making Bar-on family, the answer would be an emphatic yes it can, and yes it is.
“The two are in the same room together,” says Etai Bar-on, who works with his father, Udi, and his sister, Robin, in the company that includes Izzio Artisan Bakery, in Louisville. “We have a great deal of mechanization, and we also have a really old (style) bakery where everything is made by hand.”
By that he means each loaf of bread is hand-shaped by bakers in the same space in which the loaves are then conveyed by machine into the oven that stands 18 feet high.
“It’s very unique among bakeries,” Etai says. “We are doing the same thing as a very small artisanal bakery and a huge wholesale bakery.”
It all starts with local flour to the tune of 160,000 pounds a week — five varieties of hard red winter wheat that come from 26 Colorado farms after being milled in Platteville.
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