A mixture of flour and water. Bread in its most fundamental form is two simple ingredients, yet the creation of an unforgettable loaf of bread is nothing short of alchemy in the hands of a master breadmaker. Hanapepe Café and
A mixture of flour and water. Bread in its most fundamental form is two simple ingredients, yet the creation of an unforgettable loaf of bread is nothing short of alchemy in the hands of a master breadmaker.
Hanapepe Café and Bakery resuscitated the days of the village baker about six months ago when they hired Doug Jopling — a veteran baker with more then 30 years of experience.
“It was neat when I quit my last baking job,” he said. “I didn’t have another job lined up — I knew the path would unfold.”
Jopling said that his brother-in-law encouraged him to picture the perfect work environment in his mind.
“I just wanted to go and create,” he said. When he walked into the Hanapepe Café inquiring of a job, owner Helen Lacona told him, “You create it.”
“I thought, ‘Me?’ Create it — oh my God — this job could not be more reflective of what I want.”
Jopling walked into the pantry to discover only three steel tables. He and Lacona, who specialized as a pâtissier in culinary school, built the baking side of the business from scratch.
The bakery uses a commercial convection oven to make its 50 daily loaves — not to mention a dozen different delicacies — but it may not be long before they can boast of a steam-injected oven with a stone hearth.
“Every town needs an anchor and this café is Hanapepe’s,” said Lacona.
Bread pudding, sticky cinnamon buns, two varieties of scone and an apple pie that’s making them famous are among the pastries to count on.
As for the bread, Jopling makes French, seven-grain, sour dough, rye, challah and foccacia regularly — see insert for baking days.
In fact the braided sweet challah — pronounced ‘halah’ — was the impetus for Lacona to hire a bread baker.
“I had visitors asking for it,” she said. “Then Doug showed up and said, ‘I heard you might be looking for a baker.’”
Jopling worked for Orowheat and Alpha Beta Grocery on the Mainland, then Country Moon for six years here on Kaua‘i where he helped develop their bread recipes. Hanapepe Café is his first solo gig as a baker.
Since September he’s been building the sourdough culture for his own recipe.
“I started with a culture from San Francisco,” he said. “But the high temperatures in Kaua’i change it.”
Building bread is like a good wine or beer n it requires time to evolve. Six months later and Jopling’s sourdough culture is developing.
“It gains its own unique flavor because it picks up yeast spores from the air and the flour.”
The more you mix a culture, the more flavorful it becomes.
“The more often you feed it,” said Jopling, “the more sour the mother chef becomes.” When Jopling first started feeding the mother he fed it daily. It’s just been in the past four or five weeks that the sour flavor has matured to a level that pleases him. Now the mother chef is refrigerated and fed flour just one time a week.
“Every week I take an ample amount from the mother to build my levain,” he said.
The levain is the finished (fed) starter and is built over a 24-hour period. Like any good parent, Jopling feeds the culture three times a day.
“Dough is alive,” he said. “I add flour and water at 8 a.m., 4 p.m. and 8 p.m. and then make the bread into a dough at 3 in the morning.”
Baker’s hours sound unappealing to some, but the early morning shift means a late morning finish for Jopling. He praised the family-conscious principles that govern this small business. Hanapepe Café and Bakery is closed on weekends.
“When you can structure your work around your life and not your life around your work — it’s so beautiful,” he said.
Much of the gratification of Jopling’s position comes from the quality and integrity of this mother-daughter run café. Lacona went to culinary school specifically to partner with her daughter, Andréa Piscotta, at the café. Piscotta bought the business five years ago, but had worked as a server in the café for the previous eight years.
Jopling described the atmosphere in the kitchen as one of collaboration.
“Helen and I can talk about the way flavors dance on the tongue,” he said. “It’s hard to even call her a boss.”
Artisan bread making is a source of constant discovery — the gratifying part is being able to play with all the characteristics of this doughy medium.
“Now I see a lot of what I didn’t know before,” said Jopling. “Like how much bigger the crumb gets the softer the dough.”
Jopling likes making decisions about the crust’s thickness, taste and coarseness of the bread.
“Hanapepe is an artist’s community,” he said. “It’s the perfect setting for the art of bread making. Now I’m looking at my art in such a different way.”
• Pam Woolway, lifestyle writer, can be reached at 245-3681, ext. 257 or pwoolway@kauaipubco.com.
