![]() ![]() “There are a lot of variables ,” he says. While he’s open to adding goodies like goat cheese, raisins and olives to his loaves, he wants to keep the focus on the manipulations available on the ground floor, such as mixing grains. “It’s like coffee,” he says, “if you can get people excited about drinking black coffee … then you don’t have to mask it.” Getting back to the grain, and focusing on crafting instead of assembly, lies at the core of what McInnis is planning for the menu. As he puts it: “There’s no ‘I don’t get this.’” McInnis likes that the bar for bread appreciation is low, unlike, say, wine. Though normal hardly seems fair, given the gorgeous, toasty flavor of the loaves, and the way they - while quite hearty - don’t settle heavy in your stomach. “I just want to make something that people would have traditionally called normal bread.” “All I wanna do … I just want to make normal bread,” he says. It’s all naturally leavened with whole grains, but McInnis doesn’t want to see his loaves as just healthy, or just artisan, options. He’s also planning on a breakfast table, in which he’ll stock a table with breads, jams, butter and fruit for an informal meal.Īt its core, however, Nightingale is about the bread itself. (At least for now, watch online for a regular menu later this summer.) One caveat so far is pizza day, set aside for Saturdays from noon to 2 p.m. “It’s been like going to business school and trade school,” he says with a laugh.ĭon’t expect a static menu from Nightingale, what looks good at the market that day, or what McInnis is feeling is what you’ll find on the shelves. Much of his time since then has gone into building Nightingale, the majority of which he’s done himself. McInnis settled in Colorado Springs two years ago. (You can watch a video of Wide Awake’s process, which is somewhat similar to Nightingale’s, here.) From the winery he made his way over to Wide Awake Bakery, where he worked for three years. He learned it was mostly about putting in the work, and he liked that. McInnis, who is originally from New York, began an interest in bread after working on a vineyard in the Finger Lakes region. “You see more of the whole process,” he says, adding, “It’s not just a quality thing, but a quality of life thing.” McInnis’ take: Why should the dining room be beautiful but the kitchen ugly? And it’s not just for the employees, but for guests too. Positioned front and center next to the mill chamber, it too got the black and red tile trim. It’s then baked in a five-tier Italian bread oven.Įven the dish pit got some love. With bread-making, he says, “You’re teaching your hands how to think.” In our recent visit though, he’s found it more practical than he thought, and it’s officially part of the process.įrom there, the dough rises for a few hours, is shaped, and then set aside in a cold storage room to ferment overnight. ![]() Hand mixing obviously takes a lot more time and effort than its industrial counterpart, but McInnis wanted to give it a shot. “It might honestly be kinda dumb,” he said. McInnis wasn’t sure the French trough would make it when we first spoke in January. He’s also utilized the exterior windows for passersby to view the process of mixing the bread and then forming the dough.Ĭredit Dionne Roberts / Rocky Mountain Food Report ![]() Once the grain is ground down to flour, he then mixes up the dough by hand in a large wooden French trough. “For us, the process starts with the grain,” McInnis says of his raw materials, sourced from small farms. In fact, owner David McInnis has put the entire process on display, starting with the mill, which he imported from Raleigh, North Carolina himself. ![]() Hints of this former life still exist in the black tile trim - old chalkboards - as well as Nightingale’s emphasis on educating customers on its product. Like its neighbors at Lincoln Center, Building3 Coffee Roasters and Café Red Point, Nightingale is a former elementary school classroom. The 1,000-pound pink granite mill sits in a circular chamber, built just for this purpose. The first thing you see when you walk into Nightingale Bread, which opened at the beginning of May, is the mill that grinds grain into flour. ![]()
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