Crusty loaves in Wilton
By Rosemarie T. Anner

She’s the passionate one, hands gesticulating wildly as she speaks, sweeping silver waves of hair off her large round glasses. He is much more subdued, with a soothing voice, oblivious to the flecks of flour on his T-shirt and summer shorts. Together, they bake bread.

This husband and wife team, Mitch Rapoport and Margaret Sapir, turn out some of the most delicious, hearty, rustic bread this side of the Atlantic. Five years ago, Mitch was in product development and branding, and Margaret worked directly with clients at Berlitz. But their love of French bread turned out to be a stronger calling, and they put the skills of those former careers to work as they plunged into the arena of artisan food. Now they lead a life in the kitchen: milling, fermenting, proofing, shaping, baking, and then selling their bread.

Using a recipe they perfected under the tutelage of master baker Gérard Rubaud of Vermont, Mitch and Margaret started baking at first in their home kitchen. While their formula uses only five ingredients—flour, organic spelt and rye berries, sea salt, and Wilton town water—their pain de Campagne has a complexity and sophisticated balance seldom found in breads in this area. Rye imparts a tart note, pleasantly acidic, and spelt gives it a slightly sweet spin. The loaf has a lushly thick interior and a chewy caramel-colored crust.

From a few loaves a day peddled to local merchants, Mitch and Margaret now run a full-scale business, New England Bread Co., affectionately and commonly known as Wave Hill Breads. It’s named after the botanical garden in Riverdale, New York, where the pair got married. Their small bakery, located off Route 7 in Wilton, employs

a staff of 16, including bakers, office staff and delivery people.  During the summer months, Wave Hill practically doubles its daily output to an astonishing 1,200 loaves of bread to meet the seasonal demands of farmers’ markets, in addition to the year-round orders from restaurants, gourmet food stores, and supermarkets like Whole Foods.

An Art and a Science

In time-honored tradition, daily bread baking starts with hand-cranking a mill that pulverizes the rye and spelt. In the pre-fermentation stage, wild yeast in the grains is activated. This is called a “poolish,” and it blossoms with a heady aroma redolent of boulangeries in Paris. Six hours later, during the bulk fermentation stage, flour is combined with the poolish and is then shaped into boules (big rounded loaves), epis (that look like stalks of wheat; made by cutting the dough with scissors into one long row of pointed rolls), and country peasant (the top side of the dough is slashed with a curve-shaped tool called a “lame” to form characteristic ridges called “grignes”). Loaves are then laid between folds of thick linen cloths, known as “couches,” on top of wooden shelves and moved to a heated room for final proofing. Fourteen loaves at a time are slipped into a monstrous Bongard oven, where they are spritzed with water, which helps to create that wonderful crust. From start to finish, the whole process takes more than 12 hours and 60 50-pound bags of flour. Any leftover bread is converted into seasoned chips and croutons.

“Bread baking is a science,” says Margaret, “but more important, it is an art. It is the art of touch, time, and temperature, subtleties that distinguish one baker’s bread from another’s. And it’s learned only through experience.”

As the future continues to look bright for Wave Hill Breads, experience has taught the couple that it is time to expand. Mitch talks about finding larger quarters for the bakery, and Margaret points out that their son Jared has joined the team to bring their products to ever more markets in Fairfield County and further afield.

Most Wave Hill customers enjoy a loaf of Wave Hill bread just as it is, but the couple’s rabbi keeps reminding friends, “It makes the best toast I ever had.”

Wave Hill Breads
196 Danbury Rd (Rte 7)
(Behind Hastings Real Estate)
Wilton
203.762.9595
www.wavehillbreads.com

Open every morning for retail except Tuesday

See website for retail outlets and farmers’ markets

Rosemarie Anner was executive editor as well as food editor of Greenwich magazine for 21 years. In 2004 she founded a quarterly called inGoodTaste that ran in three publications: Greenwich, New Canaan- Darien, and Westport magazines. Rosemarie is a passionate cook and gardener (who always espouses organic methods) and an avid fan of mystery novels. Her indulgent attorney husband, a committed Yankees fan, is content reading biographies and historical works and giving her free rein in kitchen and garden.