Article by Chris Fellini with photography by Fitz
(All photos: Jonathan Highfield breadmaking from 10pm to 6am at The Bakehouse in Chelsea)
Jonathan Highfield talks about bread the way a computer programmer talks about coding. He utilizes terms like gram density and bell curve. He discusses the differences between lactic and acetic acids with scientific precision. He spends ten minutes alone just going over the minute differences in flours. Breadmaking is not just a weekend hobby for Highfield, the head baker at Chelsea Bakehouse in West Ghent.
Going to work when most people are going to the bar, Highfield starts his shift between ten and twelve every night and goes until mid morning the next day. On Saturdays, they make between four hundred and five hundred pastries and over one hundred loaves of bread. Almost everything is done by hand. As he puts it, “it’s a process, it’s a labor.” All of the breads made at Chelsea Bakehouse are produced with organic wheat milled in North Carolina. They use local ingredients as much as possible. When asked about different ingredients, Highfield can rattle off each supplier by name. “I’ll tell you exactly what’s in everything we make here because we don’t hide anything,” he says.
One of the biggest differences between The Bakehouse in Chelsea and most commercial bakers is their use of levain instead of commercial yeast. Levain is a fermented mix of flour and water, which contains wild yeast and lactobacillus from the air. Lactobacillus is the same bacteria found in yogurt, and aids the digestive system. Research is starting to show that those with gluten intolerance (not celiac) are able to digest breads produced this way, so take that all you whiny gluten-free people.
Jonathan Highfield never expected to be a baker, however. After high school, he went off to New England Culinary Institute to become a chef, but when an internship fell through things changed dramatically. With only a few months to get his required hours, he was desperate. He took a baking gig at The Omega Institute in upstate New York under the wing of Tim McGuire. Highfield credits McGuire with changing everything he had thought about bread and introducing him to the rustic styles he now makes at Chelsea Bakehouse.
Jonathan Highfield eventually took over for McGuire, after graduating. He says he “worked like a dog,” making 120 lbs. of bread a day by himself. One day, he got a call from his alma mater about a teaching job, which he took. spent the next few years bouncing from campus to campus. When the opportunity to help launch the Culinary Institute of Virginia fell into his lap, he found himself in Hampton Roads.
John McCormick, future owner of Chelsea Bakehouse, got Highfield a job moonlighting as the bread baker at Rowena’s in Norfolk. Highfield got married and had to move to Williamsburg to be closer to his wife’s job, which unfortunately meant leaving Rowena’s and focusing on teaching. Several months later, McCormick called him and proposed opening a bakery together. Highfield jumped at the chance, and the rest, as they say, is history.
The Bakehouse in Chelsea is located at 1233 W Olney Ave Norfolk, VA
For more on The Bakehouse in Chelsea visit them online here
1 Comment
Terrific article and nephew!