It’s Saturday morning and a line stretches out the door of a storefront in a well-worn Jefferson Highway strip mall. BlueRabbit Bakehouse’s homemade sourdough, rumored to be some of the best in town, is the draw.
Many in the queue hope to secure a Mary Kate, the cottage bakery’s top-selling rustic whole wheat bread. Others want The Grainwright’s Table, a loaf made from heritage red fife wheat flour. There are English muffins, sandwich breads and loaves studded with varying combinations of nuts, seeds, cheeses, cured meats and chocolate. A rotating selection of pimento cheese spreads, hummus and almond butters is on offer, too, perfect for slathering on sturdy, toothsome slices.
All the breads are sourdough, and most are made with flour that founder and sole baker Matt Bolton mills himself.
Bolton is part of a growing wave of regional cottage bakers selling small-batch breads to enthusiastic local fans. The pandemic inspired many of them to catapult hobbies into side hustles, but for Bolton, the motivation to start a bread business came from a life-changing event…