Firebrand Artisan Bread

If you live in Oakland, eat Firebrand Bread. 

If you want to eat well, eat fresh bread. If you want to eat fresh bread, make sure it is baked with good hands.

Everything you need to know about someone, you can tell by looking at their hands. His hands are tattooed and leathery. They have “Hard Work” stamped across the knuckles, as if the 36 hour shifts and incredible speed at which he works isn’t enough of an indicator. His hands are strong but never cruel, and they inspire respect. This is not a man you want to displease—his hands command dignity and you want their approval.

She has small hands, but they are also strong and she uses them with deft and a fierce tenderness. She loves the bread, but she does not coddle it and wait around for it to grow up. She fiercely, but gently, shapes pretzels and baguettes, calmly and quickly, making each dough believe that’s what it wants to be. She does not force the dough, but also does not ask its opinion. Each roll and batard believe that they are shaped as they should be. She is assertive and not afraid of asking for what she wants, but also understand that she is the farthest thing from a bully.

My mother’s hands are big and leathery too. I have never seen them painted. I asked her once if I could paint them and she just smiled. My mothers hands are shaping hands too. Good at shaping bread and dinner, but also at shaping people. Kneading her children into good people so that we too, like Colleen’s baguettes, believe that we are exactly what we are supposed to be.

I have known many hands in my life. Soft hands, mean hands, timid hands, misshapen hands, desirous hands, questioning hands, soon to be gone hands.

So if you find yourself under the bridge, near a row of buildings, underneath the single street light, look closer. There is a strip of light shining from under the roll up door. And even though the night seems quiet and abandoned, look inside. There is a hive of activity; florescent lights, Social Distortion, smoke, oven doors opening and closing, and the scramble of hands shaping, legs strutting, and mouths moving. You’ll see past the temporary shifting bodies to see a man and a woman. They stand, never quite still, flittering and humming, insane and dedicated, to each other and their work.