The process of making bread can be fascinating and a Butler-raised baker who now works near Washington, D.C. is taking a unique approach and helping to keep a little history alive.

Justin Cherry owns his own bakery, Half Crown Bakehouse, through which he is a baker-in-residence at Mount Vernon, where first U.S. president under the Constitution, George Washington, once lived.

And he’s not just selling bread there — he’s selling the way he makes it using two 18th-century wheat varieties: Rouge de Bordeaux wheat, milled at the historically important Lee family’s home at Stratford Hall, and Purple Straw wheat, milled at George Washington’s Gristmill.

Cherry bakes the bread in a wood fired clay oven, which is an antiquated way to make it, but plays into his appreciation for culinary history. It’s a brilliant way to fuse two passions into one career and Cherry clearly has a knack for baking and knowing his history.

It’s this kind of inventiveness that makes a meal special. Cherry only prepares bread at Mount Vernon for a few days each month, but he sells out of bread every day, in part thanks to the way he shows the process behind the food through an open window in the bakehouse. Cherry starts a fire in the oven overnight, so it can be hot enough to maintain its heat by 5 a.m., when he will mix 100 pounds of dough by hand.

Bread used to be made this way all the time — it was once one of the only ways to do it. We tend to forget the method behind our meals with the advent of modern grocery stores. But Cherry’s baking methods serve to remind everyone of the process our ancestors went through to put food on the table.

That’s a neat side effect to his business, one that is intentional, he said. And that’s pretty cool.

— ET