Workshop Wisdom: Jack Smylie Wild
Tell us about your work.
I set up Bara Menyn – our little sourdough bakehouse – a decade ago. Prior to that I’d just finished a degree in philosophy, and after years of getting caught up in the abstract mind games of theoretical thinking, I was ready to use my hands again; to grapple with the messy, material world, and craft something with meaning. At least this is how I look at the transition retrospectively, as I reflect on how I fell in love with the aesthetics, and the physical work, of baking. It’s been a long journey up to this point, and I still believe deeply in the importance of bread. After all, it lies at the intersection of so many quintessentially human threads: community, ecology, politics, health, craft, culture; as well as being at the heart of our domestic lives.
These days my focus is to go back to the very beginning of the baking process, and learn each step from scratch. So this year we have grown our own wheat on our friends’ organic farm. We are now milling it here in the bakehouse on our state-of-the-art New American Stone Mill, which we imported from Vermont last year. To learn first-hand about the subtleties and the risks of producing a raw ingredient has been immensely humbling, and massively satisfying.
-How would you describe your workshop?
Most workshops are a perfect balance between beauty and functionality, and the bakehouse is no different. It gets messy at times, when dough is being shaped, steam is billowing out of the ovens, and the mill is on; it’s a hive of activity. And then every day it gets restored to a clean, calm space of potential. For me it is also a place where I am in control: I have two young boys, and of course our house is a riot of Lego, breadcrumbs, and the detritus of excessive crafting. In other words, there’s not much visual calm. The bakehouse is therefore a space I can escape to, and find some order in its predictable rhythms and daily deep cleans. Although machines play a big part in what we do, human hands are still very much at the epicentre of what the bakehouse produces. Without them, nothing with personality or value comes on to the shelves.
-What is the usual day in the workshop like for you?
A sourdough bakehouse is an interesting place in as much as each day is an overlap: Thursday’s bread is mixed and shaped on Wednesday, and slumbers in its banneton baskets overnight before being baked. So each day is a juggle between mixing, baking and shaping. I normally find it hard to gear up first thing – it takes me a few hours. Especially since I stopped drinking coffee. But by 10am the tunes are on, loaves are cooling on the rack, and the first customers are coming into the shop. People often poke their heads in the bakery door for a chat, and I love these little conversations and interactions. You never know who you’re going to see or meet. Maybe a family you met a year ago, and they’ve come back here on holiday again. Maybe an old friend who’s rocked up out of the blue. Or another bakery owner who has come to say hi and have a look around. Constantly engaging with people and serving the community is what it’s all about.
-How do you best like to work? Music, podcast, silence?
We’re big on music here – it carries us along. We have a lot of Gilles Peterson on 6 music; and if we’re on Spotify, it’s eclectic. We’ve had Thee Sacred Souls on recently, as well as Hiatus Koyote, SAULT, Skinshape, Peven Everett, St Germain, Quantic…You can check out “Jack Bakery Picks” for 5 hours of tunes that often blur and blend genres.
But silence is good too. On Wednesday afternoons I’m alone in the bakehouse, shaping the loaves for Thursday’s bake. It’s peaceful, and sometimes it’s good to switch everything off and listen to the radio in your own head for a bit.
-If you could recommend one podcast or YouTube what would it be?
This week I’ve been watching Pompeii: The New Dig, and it’s blowing my mind. When Vesuvius erupted in Ad 79, the whole town was buried under metres of pumice and ash. As the archaeologists dig down through the layers, the items they uncover are incredibly poignant – often the tools of artisans who were plying their trade on that fateful day when debris rained down for 17 hours, burying their whole world: small pots of vibrant pigment used by painters to restore frescoes, left on the floor in a hurry; a newly dressed millstone in one of the town’s 40 bakehouses; a stack of brand new terracotta roof tiles, with an inventory of building materials scribed on to a nearby wall. To see these spaces and workshops frozen in time makes you realise that humans haven’t changed a great deal in 2000 years. They appreciated beauty and craftsmanship just as we do today – and also picked up a loaf on the high-street after a hard day’s graft.
-Who inspired you when you were starting your creative career?
I remember my mum giving me a copy of Tartine by Chad Robertson when I was in my early 20’s. His approach to baking, his work ethic, and the way he was just clearly obsessed with bread all rubbed off on me. His little café-bakehouse on Guerrero Street in the Mission District was the sexiest thing I’d ever seen.
-What themes, inspirations or concepts drift into your work?
The same themes that inspired my non-fiction book Riverwise: Meditations on Afon Teifi (published by Parthian) flow into the bakehouse: locality, seasonality, the land itself. Both of my creative outlets – baking and writing – are rooted in the landscape, its plants, and its people. I see both practices as elemental endeavours – getting closer to the heart of things, through observing, working slowly and methodically, and then sharing, breaking bread with those we care about. That’s the meaning of the word companion: “one who breaks bread with another.”
-What is your favourite tool to use?
My favourite tool is a beautiful French bread paddle, made from sweet chestnut. I found it in an antiques shop when I was setting up the bakehouse, and initially it was just a display piece, hanging above the counter. But as our operation grew, and the ovens became bigger and bigger, I had to start using it out of necessity, as its long handle helps to get the loaves out from the back of the deep deck ovens. It’s battered and worn, and smoothed down from perhaps a century of use. I’ll never know its precise origins, but I do feel somehow connected to those French bakers who brandished it beside their wood-fired ovens a hundred or so years ago.
-Do you have a quote or motto that you say to yourself? Do you have any rules or rituals when working?
Good things take time. I truly believe that.
But also: don’t wait to start to live.
Treading this tightrope is where we, as humans, dwell.
In terms of rules and rituals…If a job’s worth doing, it’s worth doing well. I try to take care in everything I do, whether it be shaping the 100th loaf, or sweeping out the ovens at the end of my shift; I push for perfection the whole time. It can be exhausting, and perfection is rarely achieved, but in aiming for it relentlessly, we produce high quality goods consistently.
-What advice do you have for another maker?
My advice would be that there is no substitute for hard work, long hours, and, to some extent, obsession. The trick, though, is to look after yourself at same time, which isn’t always easy – but is essential. If you feel your mental health starting to suffer – for whatever reason – take a break, before you break. Or get help, like an extra pair of hands to lessen the workload. I haven’t always struck the right balance myself, and know what it’s like to start to burn out. Building a business as a hands-on maker is a very fine line to tread, especially when you’ve got other commitments, such as raising a family. Stress can get in the way of being present with the people you love. If you’re constantly checking your socials and emails when you’re meant to be spending quality time with your kids, it’s time to reassess. I took the decision to shrink our business for this very reason. I simplified in order to be able to switch off at home. In all things, it’s about quality not quantity.
-Jack's additional podcast recommendations:
Titanic: Ship of Dreams, narrated impeccably by Paul McGann, and produced by the Noiser Network, is an incredibly well-written and researched podcast. It deep-dives into the details of the whole journey - from the ship’s original conception, through its construction and launch, to the ways in which the tragedy rippled out in the wake of its disappearance. 13 episodes of gripping storytelling.
The Coming Storm, by Gabriel Gatehouse, is an incisive analysis of the American culture wars, and is well worth a listen.