Breadservice started as a way to put to use the overabundance of sourdough bread being produced by an obsessive-compulsive baker/stay-at-home Dad to two small kids. Having moved from Portland, Oregon to Greensboro, North Carolina with my family in 2017 and on full-time stay-at-home-dad duty, I taught myself to bake naturally leavened sourdough bread with the help of the skills I gained as a professional pastry chef and kitchen manager for 20+ years. One loaf a day was never enough, two seemed about right, but four was twice the fun. Four Lodge Combo Cookers fit quite tidily into my mother-in-law’s home oven, and wouldn’t you know it, she had two of those beautiful Thermadors. So with the potential to bake eight loaves at a time, we were soon producing more than we could reasonably consume. In January 2018, my wife Ingrid suggested I put some loaves up for sale on the NextDoor app, and within 15 minutes there was someone knocking on the door for a fresh loaf. Thus Breadservice was born, and soon thereafter I was working two 15 hour days every week baking 50 or so loaves for our local Farmer’s Market.

Fast forward two years and we are in a new house, which we bought with the secondary intention of relocating and upgrading Breadservice. We now have a dedicated space in our house, where we run a state-inspected cottage bakery operation, and we’re proud owners of a Rofco B40, a bread-specific oven with a rabid fanbase designed for cottage bakeries like ours. What is sometimes known as a microbakery is just that: a tiny bakery inside our home. After a successful 2-year run at our favorite local farmers market, The Corner Farmer’s Market, we transitioned to subscription-only when the pandemic hit, with COVID-safe, contactless pickup at our home. We now sell our bread to our loyal weekly subscribers, and a few small wholesale accounts. Ingrid handles the business and I bake the bread.

This project feels like a dream, but not in the way where I’ve thought about it for years and realized my accomplishments through hard work and determination. No, this is a dream that I’ve blissfully woken up in the middle of, not quite sure how I got here; left wondering if I can keep it going whilst awake. That’s not to say the journey here hasn’t been without it’s challenges, just that it seldom feels like work. I’m eternally grateful to be baking for you out of our home, doing what I love, and spending the majority of my time with my family. I love this. I hope you can taste that love in our bread.

Jeff McCarthy