The Best Brownies
These gluten-free brownies taste best the day after they are made.
FLOUR POWER
Bonté Bakery, Montpelier
When I met with Anne Marie Shea, owner of Bonté Bakery, and her husband, Rob Lamb, in the small office off the bakery floor, I picked up how they work together, completing each other’s sentences, anticipating how the other was directing the story flow.
Anne Marie and Rob complement each other like butter complements bread. He handles the logistics, which gives her time to tinker and experiment, something she loves doing. That passion, along with a sudden realization that she was gluten-intolerant when she was pregnant with her son, gave birth to Bonté Bakery.
Anne Marie began her gluten-free baking journey by making extravagant cakes for friends and family. “I made unicorn cakes, a dragon cake, a guitar cake, and all sorts of fun stuff that just really engaged me, and I just had so much fun doing it.” From there, she went to baking bread, focusing on creating a gluten-free sourdough starter. It took seven tries to make one that behaved like it should, and now, all these years later, it’s still bubbling away. “It’s a workhorse,” Anne Marie says. “It’s fantastic. You can do whatever you want with it.”
And what she wanted to do—and actually does—is make artisan breads, including buckwheat boules, country seeded loaves, olive and rosemary boules, and others in an effort to ensure that people who don’t want to eat gluten can have access to a flavorful, nutritious bread with a hearty crust, hand-shaped and hand-scored. “So as much as we are a gluten-free bread,” she says, “it’s that we’re artisan gluten-free bread.”
Bonté Bakery’s artisan sourdough gluten-free loaves fresh from the oven.
In the bakery, the staff stands around a long stainless steel table. Music plays, and Brian Clark, Bonté Bakery’s operation manager, pulls large chunks of dough from the bowl of the industrial-size mixer. He weighs them and slaps them on the table. Others grab the dough and deftly form loaves as they chat. Once a loaf is shaped, they cradle it in a basket called a banneton with the care that a parent puts a child to bed, which, in a sense, is what happens next. The breads go into a refrigerator where they’ll slowly ferment, which unlocks and enhances their flavor. The next day, after the loaves made with commercial yeast are mixed, shaped, proofed, and baked, these loaves hit the oven.
Once they’ve baked the day’s output—180 sourdough and 120 commercial yeast loaves—they load them into their delivery van and head out on one of two routes—north on Mondays and Thursdays, south on Tuesdays and Fridays. Although they deliver to locations within a two-hour-drive radius, Rob estimates that their longest delivery day requires seven hours to complete.
Gluten-free bread may not be for everyone. Both Anne Marie and Rob admit that, but for gluten-intolerant folks who can now cut two slices from an artisan gluten-free bread, put their favorite ingredients inside, and enjoy a crusty, hearty sandwich, Bonté Bakery’s bread must seem like manna from heaven.
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