DURHAM -- Soon after Scratch, a new counter-service bakery in downtown Durham, opened to the public for the first time on a Friday morning in early June, Matt Lardie strode in: Customer No. 1.
"I'm so excited that you guys are open," said Lardie, 26, author of Green Eats blog. All week, Lardie had driven past the bakery on his way to work to see whether it was open. "I kind of stalked it," he said.
Scratch's opening was eagerly awaited, documented and gushed about on local food blogs, dining message boards and Twitter. "The excitement and anticipation for her place [to open] is the most I've ever seen here," said chef Andrea Reusing, who owns Lantern restaurant in Chapel Hill.
The buzz is about Phoebe Lawless, a baker who trained for eight years under one of the country's best pastry chefs, Karen Barker at Durham's Magnolia Grill. With her brown hair streaked with gray pulled back into a ponytail and a salt-and-pepper-shaker tattoo on her upper left arm, Lawless has spent three years developing a following selling sweet and savory pies made from local ingredients at farmers markets.
Lawless, 38, took a circuitous path to owning a bakery. She discovered inspiring home cooking thanks to a boyfriend who cooked all of his Greek-inspired meals on a charcoal grill. She gained confidence in her first job as a restaurant cook when she mastered making béarnaise sauce by hand. But she found her calling in a secluded back room at Durham's Magnolia Grill, where she learned to bake bread. And then, almost on a whim, she decided to launch her own bakery business.
The opening of Scratch also marks another step forward for downtown Durham, which seems to be rebounding one restaurant, coffee shop and bakery at a time. The city's more reasonable rents and vibrant farm-to-table food scene make it attractive to young chefs, like Lawless, looking to open their own place in the Triangle. Another one of those chefs, Watts Grocery's Amy Tornquist, said, "We have such an amazing array of people trying to do really good food."
Lawless grew up in Hendersonville, 25 miles south of Asheville. That boyfriend who introduced her to cooking would turn a few ingredients into simple Greek-influenced meals, using only a charcoal grill. "It opened my eyes to food," she said.
Lawless attended N.C. State University, tried four majors from biochemistry to philosophy, but dropped out to return home to care for her sick mother.
Having worked as a server and prep cook, just above dishwasher in the restaurant kitchen hierarchy, she was thinking food might offer a career path. She got a job as a line cook at Expressions, a fine dining restaurant on Hendersonville's Main Street. She worked the grill, cooking entrees on what seemed an intimidating menu, offering the likes of beef tenderloin and béarnaise sauce.
Discovering bread
Eventually, Lawless returned east and continued cooking. In 1996, two friends suggested she apply to be an assistant baker at Magnolia Grill, where they worked. If she didn't like baking, she would still have her foot in the door in one of the Triangle's best restaurants.
The assistant baker, an entry-level position, was responsible for baking focaccia and a French country loaf for the nightly bread basket. Lawless found love at first knead.
"I got the job and never wanted to work at night on the line again. I really, really fell in love with bread," she said.
She was captivated by being able to turn three ingredients - water, flour and yeast - into something different each day. She enjoyed the challenge of dealing with so many variables that could affect the bread's size, color, flavor and crumb. "I loved that - controlling this beast that bread can be filled me with an incredible sense of accomplishment," Lawless said.
As long as Lawless produced a consistent, high-quality product, chef-owners Ben and Karen Barker let her experiment and learn.
"She soaked up baking like a sponge. She's a natural baker," Karen Barker said.
Lawless spent eight years at the Grill, graduating from breads to desserts and becoming a pastry chef under Barker - no small achievement at Magnolia Grill. Karen Barker, after all, was named the country's best pastry chef in 2003 by the James Beard Foundation, a nonprofit that hands out the Oscars of the food world.
Until then, Lawless said, she wasn't a dessert person. But she learned from Barker that dessert isn't just about sugar, but rather a meal's ending should be a balance of sweetness, sourness, temperature and texture.
About Barker, Lawless said, "She bakes like a cook."
About Lawless, Barker said, "Of all the people I've trained, she bakes the most like me."
In 2007, Barker had to choose a protégé to make dessert for a special dinner at the Inn at Blackberry Farm, a luxury resort in the Smoky Mountains known for its farm-to-table fine dining. Barker tapped Lawless, who had spent the previous year and a half at home with her daughter. But here she was cooking alongside lauded young Southern chefs - Hugh Acheson, Mike Lata and John Currence. "It was all these James Beard winners or nominees and me - a mom," Lawless said.
Someone there asked what she did. Lawless responded: I am going to sell pie at farmers markets. The idea had been floating in the back of Lawless' mind as an easier way to return to baking. But she had not done any research or talked about it with her partner. So Lawless came home and applied at both the Carrboro and Durham farmers markets. Her applications were turned down - a blow at first, Lawless conceded, but one that in hindsight worked to her advantage.
Finding her spot
A friend was able to get her a spot at a small farmers market in downtown Raleigh. After one season, Lawless became a vendor at the slightly larger South Estes Farmers' Market at University Mall in Chapel Hill. In fall 2008, Lawless made it to her hometown market in Durham. She had the less congested winter season to ease into selling at the Triangle's third-largest farmers market.
By spring, crowds were a common sight at Lawless' stand, as customers lined up for braised lamb, rice and sofrito empanadas for $6, chocolate with sea salt tarts for $5 and $2 doughnut muffins, a cakelike doughnut that is baked not fried but far from low calorie in either chocolate or buttermilk.
Until that point, Lawless had been able to bake for the markets at home, doing all-night baking marathons.
But when the crowds arrived that spring, demand outstripped what she could produce at home. Tornquist of Watts Grocery offered her catering kitchen - an act for which Lawless is very grateful. At home, Lawless could make about 75 small pies for market day; now she could bake 375.
That's when the logistics of running a business without a home base for deliveries or storage space for ingredients started to take a toll. Lawless was arranging deliveries by farmers and vendors to her friends' restaurants. She would drive all over Chapel Hill and Durham picking up her stashed ingredients for baking sessions.
Finally, Lawless said, the time was right to consider opening her own place. She settled on a concept: a counter-service breakfast and lunch spot with sweet and savory baked goods, fresh salads, sandwiches and Counter Culture coffee and espresso. As at the farmers market, her menu would change frequently and reflect what local farmers were growing. She would continue to sell Wednesday afternoons and Saturday mornings at the Durham Farmers' Market. Despite the economic downturn, she found private financing.
Then she found the perfect spot: an old storefront on Orange Street, a pedestrian-friendly corridor across from Durham's City Hall, and best of all for a bakery, the building's exterior is the color of butter.
Three weeks after opening, people seem excited about the bakery and happy with the baked goods, Lawless said, and she's adjusting to this new retail experience. The shop has more sporadic crowds than the sustained crush during the four hours at the farmers market. On Friday, no one came into the bakery between 9:30 and 11 a.m., but they were slammed for lunch and almost sold out of everything.
"The food I can do," she said. "The business aspect is what I'm learning now."
