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It’s not even 9 a.m. and Wendy and
Michael London are off and running, so to speak, in a fragrant
conference room at The Equinox Hotel. As a rapt audience sits
silently, the owners of Mrs. London’s, the critically
acclaimed bakery and café in Saratoga Springs, NY,
demonstrate the art of crafting apple strudel.
Wendy, clad in a chef jacket, stretches the dough with aching
finesse, while Michael offers a running commentary, which
inevitably flows into a soliloquy on his driving passion—bread
baking.
“Bread is my inner path,” he said with a smile.
“I’ve devoted a good deal of my life to baking
bread.”
The Londons were one of the seminar presenters at the annual
Santé Symposium sponsored by Santé Magazine,
a restaurant industry trade magazine based in Bennington.
The symposium drew more than 300 industry professionals from
around the country (including keynote speaker Tim Zagat) for
its central message of how to increase profits and stay on
top of trends by learning from dozens of successful restaurateurs
and wine purveyors who offered seminars.
“Wendy and Michael London really typify the Santé
Symposium speakers,” said Mark Vaughan, editor and publisher
of Santé Magazine. “They are at the top of their
game as bakers and restaurant entrepreneurs, they bring a
tremendous amount of experience and insight to the event,
and they are passionate about what they do.”
For Michael London, the equation of food industry success
is distilled into two simple parts: the use of the best ingredients
and the existence of an innate passion.
For the bakery’s famous “fire breads,” which
are baked in a wood-fired oven, the foundation is biodynamic
flour. (For the record, when it comes to eating his bread,
Michael prefers Echire butter, churned from the milk of cows
that graze in the Deux Sevres region of France.) Aside from
that, the most important ingredient is an intangible one.
“Time is an ingredient to my bread,” he said looking
out at the audience, his black pants dusted with a veil of
white flour. “It’s like ‘no wine before
its time’. One of the biggest mistakes is not paying
attention to the bread and allowing it to reveal itself to
you.”
“I always tell people to pay attention to their starter.
It may take three hours, it may take four. It’s like
a carpenter paying attention to the grain of the wood. When
you’re paying attention, you don’t have music
blaring in the background, you don’t have that schizophrenic
disconnect…and you can pay attention to the bread.”
Such attention to detail may seem obsessive, but it’s
the Londons’ unyielding insistence on quality that has
made their business what it is today—descended upon
in droves by locals and tourists, extolled in publications
such as The New York Times and Food & Wine, and revered
over the years by a spectrum of notables from George Balanchine
to Rachael Ray.
Mrs. London’s first incarnation was a small bakery on
Phila Street in Saratoga Springs from 1977 to 1985. In 1986,
the couple co-founded Rock Hill Bake House in Greenwich. Word
soon spread and bread lovers would drive for miles to the
remote Washington County location to buy bread baked in the
London’s French commercial oven in the farmhouse kitchen.
Eventually, the idea to re-open Mrs. London’s began
to germinate. In preparation, a 60-ton brick oven was built
near the farmhouse.
“It was built as a test kitchen oven prior to opening
Mrs. London’s,” said Michael. “I was probably
the only baker in America losing $20,000 a year.”
But still, he wouldn’t budge on the ingredient list.
“I prefer using biodynamic flour because it’s
a much more holistic form of Agriculture and Viticulture,”
he explained. “It was developed by Rudolph Steiner and
accounts for fertility and health of the soil as well as the
effect of the cosmos on the plant.”
In 1997, the couple decided that, before taking another shot
at operating a bakery and café in Saratoga Springs,
a little retraining was in order. True to their crème
de la crème philosophy, the schooling took place in
Paris during a two-year study of the pastry-making process.
“We worked at two great patisseries in Paris and it
allowed us to expand our repertoire,” said Michael.
That expanded repertoire is coming in handy for their latest
venture—helping son Max with his new restaurant next
door to the café, Max London’s.
The menu of their son’s restaurant is a tapestry of
wood-fired pizza, local and organic meats, cheeses, and vegetables,
and a dizzying combination of “small plate” tapas.
“Wendy and I will be collaborating on the desserts for
the restaurant,” said Michael.
As Michael passes out samples of Wendy’s just-baked
apple strudel, the conversation turns to the alarming rise
in dairy and flour prices.
“Organic white flour is 97 cents a pound now. And regular
flour has gone from 25 to 61 cents a pound,” he said.
“That was my reality check in March…I haven’t
looked in three months.”
Despite the pains of inflation, downgrading the ingredient
list has never been an option.
“We would never do that. It’s not who we are.
What distinguishes us is the value we offer,” said Michael.
“People recognize while they may be paying a little
more for what we offer, they’re getting value…in
a world that’s increasingly debased and without value.
The perception of value is not so much in the price but what
they’re getting for the price. Anything less would be
a designation called ‘near-food.’”
Steering the conversation back to food of the Mrs. London’s
variety, his eyes flash with delight as he remembers his favorite
modification to their strudel recipe.
“I make a savory version at home,” said Michael.
“Using cheese instead of apples. Little ping-pong balls
of Tallegio…it’s addictive.”
For more information on Mrs. London’s, visit www.mrslondons.com.
For more information on Santé Magazine, visit www.santemagazine.com.
Stacey Morris is a freelance food and travel writer based
in the Adirondacks. Her writing has appeared in Better Homes
& Gardens, Cooking with Paula Deen, Arrive, The Philadelphia
Inquirer, and The Montreal Gazette. Her website is www.staceymorris.com.
readerspage@berkshirehomestyle.com
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