For Ray, the daily grind also includes loafing around

MILLERTON — When it comes to food, you can’t get much fresher than hand-baked bread made from hand-ground grain. Every week in Millerton, Barbara Ray makes exactly that. 

Although Ray has been baking recreationally since she was a child, she didn’t go professional until about six years ago. 

Until recently, her career was mainly in wine. She worked in the California wine industry for 25 years after earning a degree in viticulture and enology at the University of California in Davis. When she came to the East Coast, Ray got a job in purchasing and sales at Little Gates & Co. Wine in Millerton.  

“I’ve always loved cooking,” Ray said, “and when my son Julian gave me an amazing cookbook I had to try it out.” 

She experimented with a variety of breads, and eventually decided to share her passion with the community. 

Six years ago, she baked a batch of bread and brought it to yoga class at Space studio in Lakeville. After class, she sold the loaves out of the back of her car — and was met with a flurry of enthusiastic buyers. 

“This area is very supportive of local bread, and very conscious,” Ray said. So supportive, in fact, that she soon overwhelmed the Space parking lot, and decided to expand her business. 

To acquaint herself with the commercial bread world, Ray spent a year working at Bantam Bread in Bantam, Conn., where she learned how to bake on a larger scale. 

Her new skills and knowledge allowed her to sell her bread wholesale to two farmers markets. Today, her bread is sold at Silamar/Sol Flower on Fridays and Saturdays in Millerton (www.solflowerfarm.com)  and at Herondale Farm Market (www.herondalefarm.com) in Ancramdale on Saturdays. Any remaining loaves are sold at yoga class (www.yogaatspace.com) and at Little Gates (www.littlegateswine.com).  

The bread is sold at between $6 and $6.50 per loaf. Most are multigrain. Ray’s specialties include sweet potato rosemary, fruit and nut, jalapeno cheese, sourdough wheat, and challah. Ray experiments often with new flavors, so the menu constantly changes. 

One aspect of her baking that doesn’t change, however, is the quality of her ingredients. Ray uses yeast from Bantam Breads and eggs from Pine Hill Farm in Sharon and Spencer Farm. 

Her grain comes from her sister in Maine, and Ray grinds 25 to 35 percent of it by herself.  With the help of her brother-in-law, she designed and constructed a bicycle-powered grain grinder to help get the job done. The machine consists of a stationary bike hooked up to a grain grinder powered by the bike’s pedals. 

“It was a life saver,” Ray said. “Grinding grain by hand is back-breaking work.” 

Ray said she would be willing to increase the size of her business, if she could find someone to help with the work.

“I’m always looking for the right apprentice,” she said, “but not many young people want to wake up at 3 a.m. four or five days a week. It’s hard work. You have to really love what you do.”

So if the work is so difficult, what’s in it for Ray? Eating the bread, of course! But there is also a creative pleasure that comes with baking and working with her hands. 

“I love the ability to create that comes with baking,” she said. “You can put anything in bread: fruit, nuts … I experiment with how much dough I use, I put in any and all vegetables, I use molasses instead of sugar (except in my challah). I love the creativity, and I love eating it. It’s delicious.”