New Jersey Food Journal

Monday, May 25, 2015

The Bread of Life Lessons

Photo credits: Alexandra R. Meier


By Alexandra R. Meier

Breadmaking entrepreneur John Ropelski has learned his fair share of lessons over his two and a half years of owning his part-sandwich-shop-part-bakery, &Grain.

         Score the dough before baking a baguette. This keeps the shape of the loaf straight and neat.
         No matter what detractors think, pain de mie makes great French toast. Plus, this loaf is more versatile and less expensive than brioche.
         Watch out for your reflection. It may sneak up on you late at night and spook you, as the oven’s steam makes the bakery’s glass walls look like mirrors.

Located in Garwood, &Grain offers customers eight house-made breads, from five-grain to ciabatta, that are used to accent a variety of breakfast and lunch menu options, such as harvest turkey club and French toast. The eatery’s vibrancy is palpable; saturated in natural light, the space is filled with children eating kid-friendly PB&J sandwiches and mothers sipping cold-brewed coffee.
Historically, culturally and theologically speaking, bread is life, and Ropelski stocked up on a few life lessons during his journey that helped him craft today’s customer experience. Although Ropelski acknowledges that he can talk anyone’s ear off about bread, he keeps his set of life mottos short and sweet:

1.  If it sounds too good to be true, it usually is.
           
Perhaps biological engineering obliged Ropelski to become a breadsmith; he comes from a linage of Polish bakers. But Ropelski originally intended to pursue a career in finance and clinched an opportunity to work as a mortgage broker for Smith Barney (now Morgan Stanley Wealth Management) after college. The money seemed brisk and bountiful and was, foreseeably, too good to be true. “I didn’t look at the long term plan,” Ropelski admits. He saw the writing on the wall for the market’s inevitable demise, and backed out of the mortgage industry. Unlike his colleagues, who wasted their paychecks on fancy cars, Ropelski saved his money. He had always wanted to open a business, and at that moment, the door to the metaphorical oven had opened.

Photo credits: Alexandra R. Meier


2. Nothing in life is free.

By the time &Grain opened in August 2012, Ropelski certainly understood that nothing in life is free. Hurricane Irene pushed back the first year of construction, and her big sister Sandy disrupted the eatery’s opening. By the time &Grain was up and running, Ropelski had only $3,000 to his name.

It took Ropelski a bit longer to learn that perfecting a skill also comes at a price. With his background in finance, he assumed his entrepreneurial endeavor would be a cakewalk. He would research budgeting, find equipment, and take a two-day breadmaking class. He had no desire to actually bake the bread — Ropelski just wanted to ensure that a baker couldn’t potentially use the signature recipe as blackmail. “I thought, ‘How hard could [breadmaking] be?’ ” he remembers. “I guess because [bread’s] so readily available and relatively inexpensive, it’s a food that nobody gives a second thought to.”

For Ropelski, learning bread would be a three-year process. On his first day of classes at the French Culinary, now the International Culinary Center, he told the head chef his original plan. She laughed, and warned Ropelski that he had “another thing coming to him.” So instead, Ropelski entered the school’s bread program, then exercised his practical muscles by working in New York-based bakeries. “The only way you can make good bread,” he eventually learned, “is by making a lot of bad bread.”

3. You get what you pay for.
           
This was last adage to attach itself to Ropelski’s triad of mottos. All of the mundane, methodical, and muggy hours spent baking, both as an apprentice and owner, taught him to respect craftsmanship. Before Ropelski hired a baker of his own, he spent 20 hours a day, seven days a week preparing and serving his breads. He compares this process to running a marathon. “There’s eight different breads I make here daily, and I will tell everybody that I have eight children,” he says.

Financially speaking, Ropelski usually breaks even, but he sees the most success in the response from the community. He notices his fair share of returnees. He has 4.5 stars on Yelp. And when his daughter was born, his apartment was filled to the brim with gifts from customers. “Everything I’ve ever tried to do in my life, I’ve tried to be the best at it,” he asserts. “If I was going to be a garbage man, I would be the world’s best garbage man. It’s about taking pride in what you do. I’m making bread, I want to try to make the best bread, and I can.”

Alexandra R. Meier is a Rutgers University senior, majoring in journalism and media studies. She is the former editor-in-chief of the university’s student-run newspaper, The Daily Targum, and will be interning for WABC-TV this summer.