The Breadery keeps Crested Butte nourished and carbo-loaded
By Kendra Walker
It’s 4:45 p.m. and a line of hungry locals has formed outside of the Breadery on Elk Avenue. Delicious smells waft through the air and the people peek in the window display, eager to claim their pick of the day’s spread. The hot commodity? Fresh sourdough.
“I still get excited every day when I see people outside waiting for us to open to get some bread,” says Breadery owner and sourdough extraordinaire Meg Antonczyk. “It takes me back to our early backdoor pizza days.”
What started out five years ago as an underground staple for carb-loving locals has now evolved into a beloved full-service restaurant, bar and sourdough bakehouse. Living up to its slogan of “Peace, Love and Gluten,” the Breadery offers handmade bread, pastas and pizza, seasonal vegetables and ingredients made from scratch. “We make all our bread by hand,” says Meg. “And it is hard. Sometimes I think it would be easier if we didn’t do it all from scratch…but that’s not the Breadery.”
Meg is a Polish immigrant, who moved with her family to the United States at age 5. “The Polish community has shaped who I am and how I view the world. It’s also a very scrappy mindset, just using what you have available to you and making it work. That’s stuck with me my whole life,” she says. “My grandma was a big baker, and I always gravitated toward baking with her in the kitchen.”
Meg spent her childhood in Cleveland, Ohio, then lived in Montana before moving to Crested Butte in 2005. “I was 19. My first job here was at the Secret Stash,” she recalls. “I was coaching for the Crested Butte Academy and washing dishes at the Stash by night. I attribute a lot of my love for food to Jeff Graceffa, one of the original owners of the Stash. I always looked up to his zest for pizza and food. I never thought I’d be in the restaurant or baking world, but I fell in love with the organized chaos of it all.”
While bartending for the Sunflower, Meg began dabbling more with baking and started making desserts. “(Sunflower owners) Natalie and Chris gave me the opportunity to try and do my own things with cakes and desserts. I essentially just self-taught myself and experimented a lot. I love to read and I’m constantly reading cookbooks and trying new things.”
Meg eventually took on the Sunflower Bakery and Brunch with her friend Jordan. “That was my first exposure to creating my own menus and having my own staff and doing payroll. You also really have to curate your menu and dining concept around the space you’re in. I got a lot of help from Chris and Natalie and the community during that time. We thought we were crazy for doing salads and fancy toasts for breakfast. But people loved it, it was a success.”
However, they outgrew the space and started looking for another kitchen. They moved into the Off-Elk bakery building, now Thai Smile, in April 2019 and rented out the kitchen space to start experimenting more with bread and pizza. “We had the kitchen from 4 p.m. till midnight. That’s essentially where Breadery 1.0 was born,” she says.
Meg felt there might be a market for bread and wanted to try to get their name out. “We started baking things for the Gunnison Farmers Market, and then we started doing our backdoor pizza nights.” Every Wednesday, folks could call in their order for a sourdough loaf or pizza with seasonal toppings and pick it up at the back door of the bakery building, while supplies lasted. “We got a lot of traction with that, it was so fun. It was very low-key and grassroots. We got to meet so many customers, people that wanted bread and pizza. That was a really special time,” she recalls fondly, but admits that it was also really stressful.
After a year slinging backdoor pizzas, the COVID pandemic hit and Meg took a break. “Off-Elk didn’t re-sign the lease and we couldn’t afford the space to ourselves. Jordan moved away so I was left really trying to fight for the Breadery and its identity.”
Meg continued to bake bread and cakes at her house, dipping her toes into the wedding market making wedding cakes. “During COVID I knew I had to try every single option,” she says, “but there were no spaces for rent. It was grim. I was on the verge of leaving town.”
However, as luck would have it, Meg had the opportunity to take over the Django’s restaurant building lease. “This place became open and it was so scary. It was one of the hardest and scariest things ever. But I knew it was now or never, so I jumped right in and did it,” she says. With the help from her partner Scott, friends and other helping hands, Meg renovated the space and prepped it for her new Breadery vision. “I relied on all the amazing people I’ve met along the way for help.”
The Breadery moved into its current home in April 2021. Sourdough is still the main character. Meg uses her grandma’s 60-year sourdough starter named Trisha to make all the bread. “I’ve had her for about 15 years and she used to live in a little Mason jar. Now we have a 22-quart jar for her.”
Meg bases her sourdough recipe on the San-Francisco-based Tartine bakery method. “We make all our bread by hand, using organic flour, water and salt,” she says. “No yeast, no additives, no preservatives. Sourdough is one of the most unprocessed breads we can eat. It’s good for gut health and easier to digest than other breads because it’s fermented for 36-72 hours.”
The bread-making process begins by mixing Trisha with flour, water and salt to make the dough. The dough balls ferment overnight and are divided up into the different loaves and pizzas. Then each loaf is baked in an individual Dutch oven. “It’s usually three or four rounds of baking each day,” says Meg, explaining that they have 16 Dutch ovens that fit into the kitchen’s larger ovens. “It’s a process for sure and takes up a lot of space. But every loaf truly gets its individual attention.”
Meg estimates they bake around 48 loaves of bread a day, especially on weekends. In addition to the classic loaf, the team incorporates fun flavors like jalapeno cheddar, gruyere and Baker’s Choice.
“There’s something very simple about bread, but also complicated at the same time,” she says. “You can be doing the same thing every day, and then sometimes things go wrong and you’re trying to be a detective to figure out what happened. I love that about it, that it’s ever changing.”
She is also proud that they waste very little bread. Leftover day-old bread gets turned into croutons, and then leftover croutons get turned into breadcrumbs. “We have very minimal bread waste. Bread is full cycle, full circle here.”
With an emphasis on handmade sourdough breads and flatbreads, the menu also features salads and hand-rolled pastas made with local, seasonal ingredients. “I focus on using simple ingredients, but elevated,” she says. “I like to start with a seasonal ingredient, a simple flavor, and then run with that and experiment with how to feature it throughout the menu. I like to take something that’s traditionally boring and figure out how to make it exciting with different textures and fancy garnishes. For example, how can we make beets or parsnips fun?”
Meg says she’s constantly changing the menu, often two to three times a week. “It’s a blessing and a curse,” she laughs. “Sometimes it’s a miss, but that’s the fun part of having a rotating menu and the beauty of being able to change the menu. If an idea doesn’t work, we turn it into breadcrumbs and get creative with backup plans. I try to encourage my staff to experiment on their own and come up with fun ideas. It’s really a group effort, we’re all learning together.”
Changing the menu also allows Meg to play into local, seasonally available ingredients. “The summer is almost overwhelming, you’ve got the peaches and tomatoes and so many things. In the summer you could come in on a Wednesday, and the menu will be completely different on Friday.”
Meg finds inspiration from seasonal cookbooks as well as her Polish heritage. “Our pierogies are based on my grandma’s recipe, I remember making those with her,” she says. But Meg says there are also certain menu items that have become staples, like the ragu and bread pudding. “There are some things we just can’t take off the menu at this point. But it’s also fun to have people try new things. I always enjoy revisiting a different season’s menu. I get asked about the pumpkin ravioli all the time. And the Christmas menu is one of my favorite things we work on.”
Cooking and baking at altitude hasn’t phased Meg much, either. “I’ve always baked at high elevations so I think Trisha has acclimated well.” The elevation has a greater effect when it comes to baking desserts, and Meg adjusts all of her dessert recipes accordingly. “But the weather affects our baking process more than anything,” she says. “Every fall there’s this one week where the weather turns a corner and the bread just doesn’t rise. We have certain heartbreaking days where we have to turn all the bread into croutons. But we adapt and adjust, and switch to warmer water and proof the dough longer.”
Meg also ensures that the restaurant space has a warm, cozy and welcoming atmosphere. Local artists and Crested Butte businesses are featured prominently throughout the dining room decor. “I’m all about supporting the homies, that’s really important to me,” she says. “And I have an amazing team. It’s hard to find employees and I definitely had a good group of people to help start this place. I’m so proud of the bar program, Kori and Fiona are just running with it. It wouldn’t be the place it is without everyone here.”
Meg appreciates the positive response to the Breadery’s evolution. “It’s really important to me to be able to cater to everyone, especially the locals. I always wanted it to be that you could come here after a hike or for a fancy date night. I’m very grateful people feel comfortable enough here to come for a beer or margarita, or for their honeymoon or engagement dinner.”
Meg is also grateful for the love and support she’s received over the years from the Crested Butte community, her chosen family. “All my friends have helped me build this and I’m truly so grateful the community took a chance on my crazy idea. This town has supported the Breadery even when it was just backdoor pizza. I never take that for granted because that is what has made it possible. And the restaurant community here really is a tight-knit family. We’ve all learned and grown together. I feel so supported and can roll with it and flourish taking this risk in the community. As much as the Breadery is mine, I cannot fully take credit for it being mine. It is because of this town and this community.”
