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E-mail StoryBenham column: Rolling around in dough - - literally
Couple get new yeast on life by opening bakery
| Monday, Jul 9 2007 7:55 AM
Last Updated: Tuesday, Jul 10 2007 8:49 AM
Bread.
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Courtney Harrison checks the temperature of bread as it comes out of the oven at the Great Harvest Bread Co., that he and his wife Kari opened in Bakersfield.
Courtney Harrison holds a loaf of fresh baked bread at the Great Harvest Bread Co. bakery he and his wife Kari opened in Bakersfield. The couple left their corporate careers to open the bakery where, as Courtney said with a smile, "I could wear a Hawaiian shirt to work." The couple traveled to New York and Boston to get ideas for their bakery that is located at 9901 Hageman Road in Bakersfield.
Freshly baked bread at Great Harvest Bread Co. at 9901 Hageman Road in Bakersfield.
It has a good sound -- any way you slice it: Whether you mean green U.S. crispies or that small, fragrant miracle that comes out of the oven, it's hard to criticize either bread or bread.
Courtney and Kari Harrison specialize in the second kind. It smells good, tastes better and will dress up a table, a counter or a meal like a bouquet of flowers.
Who doesn't like fresh bread? My otherwise sensible cousin has gone on a bewildering health kick -- you can't even call it a diet -- which has him giving up bread.
Giving up bread? Why don't you just give up water? Or breathing?
Prior to opening The Great Harvest Bread Company on Hageman Road (right across from Riverlakes Community Church), the Harrisons, both 38, were just not singing praises to Mondays when they came around, as Mondays inevitably do.
Courtney (not a common boy's name anymore -- and doesn't he know it!) was a district manager for a distributor that sold movies, videos and books to Wal-Mart. The Ridgecrest native slogged through airports, dogged field reps and was responsible for a sales office that did about $640 million dollars a year.
Kari was a dental hygienist and her back was killing her. They both hit the wall about the same time. The Harrisons wanted to do something else and 38 seemed like a good age to do it, although what that something else was remained unclear.
Like most people, other than my cousin who is just being stubborn, they liked bread. Kari had been in a Great Harvest -- it's a franchise -- and liked what she saw. The breads were tasty, the owners laid-back and in addition, Great Harvest was a "freedom franchise," which meant that the Harrisons could change the recipes and design their own store.
Courtney hit the road and visited coffeehouses, bakeries and delis in New York and Boston for a month, soaking up the old-world feel. After lining up the franchise, they found commercial property in the northwest -- which was not easy.
Courtney then spent two weeks in Salem, Ore., working in a Great Harvest bakery and learning the business.
The Harrisons opened Dec. 1. Courtney might have thought he was working hard schlepping Danielle Steel novels to Wal-Mart, but since they started Great Harvest, he went nine months without a day off.
Welcome to the world of small business: You can work as hard as you want -- as long as you work really hard all the time.
"There is no going home," Courtney said. "This is home."
Weight Watchers could learn something. Turns out owning your own business is a good way to lose weight. In nine months, Kari lost 20 pounds and Courtney, 38.
Like losing weight, nothing's fast in the bread business. The baking process takes five hours from start to finish. The Harrisons mill their whole wheat on-site, saying it tastes fresher that way.
Equipment includes nine 140- quart stainless steel bowls, a huge Reed oven with revolving shelves capable of baking more than 400 loaves at once and a gigantic Hobart mixer.
The Harrisons have three bakers and a total of 18 people on the payroll. Because they punch down dough and knead bread all day, you wouldn't want to mess with the bakers because their muscles have muscles.
Courtney can bake up to 200 breads but focuses on about 14 a day. Breads include the popular honey whole wheat (that guy weighs about 2.5 pounds), cheddar garlic and cinnamon swirl.
Great Harvest offers samples to its customers. Talk about shooting fish in a barrel. Combine delicious bread with guilt and you have an automatic sale.
I had a taste of the pesto parmesan swirl and the Monkey bread with cinnamon chips.
I bought a loaf of Monkey bread. It was sweet, satisfying and I think my son ate about three quarters of it. I'm not saying rush, but put down this newspaper and drive over there and buy a loaf of Monkey bread right now.
Besides bread, Great Harvest makes sandwiches and serves Peet's coffee, which is so strong and full-bodied that my sister refers to it as divorce coffee.
The place works. It has a nice feel. People in the northwest evidently love bread, because the store was jammed by the time I left.
Here's the kicker to leaving a corporate or stress-packed job: Kari is pregnant with a girl.
They've waited 10 years for this.
And you know I'm going to say it, because I'm shameless: Finally, the Harrisons have a bun in the oven.