Scott Medellin at the Burlington Farmers Market
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flavor: He adds a corn “juice,” for example, to his polenta bread, and he blended apple cider into the starter for a ciderand-squash loaf last weekend. Most of Slowfire’s whole-grain flours come from Maine Grains, a grist mill in Skowhegan, Maine, that specializes in New England-grown organic heritage grains. Mills in Québec and Kansas supply the organic white wheat flour Medellin uses in pastries and some loaves. “The products you’re using and how they’re produced definitely dictate how you’re going to bake and what you’re going to be able to bake with them,” he says. Medellin, 35, grew up in Lubbock, Texas, and graduated from the College of William & Mary in Virginia with a history degree. Assuming he’d end up in academia, he took the logical next step: working in restaurants. During the day, he delivered for Billy Bread, a beloved bastion of artisan baking in Richmond, Va., where he learned the basics of fermentation. “This isn’t rocket science,” he says, “but it is a skill that you have to know about to do it properly.” Eventually, Medellin wanted a change of scenery. He moved to Vermont in 2008 and into a series of restaurant and foodrelated jobs, including a stint cooking at Starry Night Café in Ferrisburgh. During an earlier gig at Shelburne Orchards, he perfected a system for making cider doughnuts. He was baking, but the fryer was a far cry from the wood-fired oven that he used at Flack Family Farm in Fairfield, where he launched his business. Medellin built Slowfire’s first bakery on another friend’s farm in Jeffersonville and shifted to the current location nearby in spring 2016. At the bakery, Medellin’s workdays span about 20 hours, beginning around 2 a.m. when he starts mixing the dough. Only last summer did he buy an industrial mixer; before that, he mixed all his loaves by hand.
The mixed dough takes six to 10 hours to ferment, “proof” (or go through a final rise), and be shaped into loaves. Some breads go into Slowfire’s brick oven, but most bake in an electric bread oven for consistency and efficiency. The last batch usually comes out of the oven close to midnight. Medellin grabs a few hours of sleep before starting again. On Tuesdays and Thursdays, he packs up and delivers orders for the Farm Store and Hanley’s General Store in Jeffersonville, Jericho Center Country Store, Jericho Market, and Philo Ridge Farm in Charlotte. Medellin’s biggest push is Friday for the Burlington Farmers Market. During the busiest weekends, he often sells close to 275 loaves of bread, 175 tarts, and 175 croissants and other pastries, he says. “The baguettes are the most constant thorn in the side,” Medellin says. It’s not easy to get the nice color, crust and grigne, which is the curl or “ear” that lifts away from the crust during baking. He scores each loaf, making diagonal cuts with a razor blade. “If you get it at the right angle, and if the dough is at the right stage of proofing, hopefully it opens up in that way,” he says. Slowly, methodically, with trial and error, Medellin has fine-tuned his technique. It takes patience and no small amount of perfectionism, plus a pinch of humility. “I feel like I’ve barely scratched the surface,” he says. “The more I do it, the less I feel like I know.” Medellin doesn’t remember exactly how he came up with the bakery’s name. It’s a fitting reflection, though, of his own pace and process — like the slow-moving, methodical turtle on its logo, breathing fire into an oven. m
INFO Slowfire Bakery, 4008 Route 108, Jeffersonville, 514-7289. Learn more on Facebook.
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