The Farmhouse Bakery
Simple from scratch, fresh, never frozen - because that’s how it’s got to be…
The Little Farmhouse on the Prairie.
INTRO:
[Jason:] Okay fellow Food Explorers - I am outright going to admit that I grew up watching Little House on the Prairie after school and it holds a romanticized ideal in my head about simpler times where everything was simple, family meant something and problems got solved by everyone pulling together. Fast forward to 2019 with the COVID wrecking ball that started smashing through families and small businesses and then the following inflation and carbon tax nonsense and reality can really be a harsh b… uh, buzz. But Colleen and I have been absolutely charmed by a small family owned farm and bakery extraordinaire!! While I’m jealous she got to visit their operation, I’m so happy they’re able to survive these treacherous times and bring us their beautifully simple, incredibly delectable baked artisan treats. This is the story of The Krause Family Farm. [JMC]
The Farmhouse Bakery is one of Jason and my favourite bakeries and has been for years. [Jason:] Actually, it is my absolute favourite bakery, hands down - on this continent because I haven’t had Rebecca’s olive focaccia from Fingas Bakery in Taiwan in over a decade, and I really miss Dereke and his family. [JMC] Funnily, how we found out about them was kind of an eerily random chance. One day while we were running errands at Bountiful Farmers’ Market, Jason was waiting near a box that said “Enter to win” so he filled in a slip and thought nothing of it. Later, just as we were pulling away, I weirdly got a random telephone call from an unknown number that normally I would have just ignored but I answered it and it was someone saying I had won a prize from Bountiful Market! I didn’t even know I’d entered (“Oh, yeah,” says Jason, “I entered you in some draw or something because I never win anything.”) Though we weren’t really sure what I’d “won”, we turned around and when we got back there were two very happy people who handed us three green, huge reusable grocery bags filled to the brim with goodies from all the vendors of the market!! We kind of looked at them and double checked that ALL of this was for us? Yeah, you won the grand prize! To say we were delighted would be an understatement.
Now, once the errands were done and we got back to our commercial kitchen, we spread all the goodies out on the tables and we started to work our way through them so we could thank the vendors by posting on Instagram, which makes us sad now because that IG account got hacked, sigh - but that’s another story for later. There was one prize in particular that stood out though: a plain brown paper bag with no branding or markings that had a simple loaf inside. When we got it home and Jason tore into it (of course, he’s a bread fiend) and he was instantly raving! Best sourdough ever! Who baked this? How do we get more? When we got back to the market, we asked our other vendor friends where this delicious sourdough bread came from and they said, The Farmhouse Bakery, of course! And that was how we were lucky and blessed enough to stumble into the amazing team of Nadine, Nathaniel, Jerry, Matthew, Daniel and the rest of the crew! (Hi Daniel, too!)
Now that was in the “before times” and we’ve been happy and loyal customers ever since so when I got a four week teaching contract on Maskwacis Reserve I was super excited to learn there was an air bnb/country abode in Gwynne, AB that is only a few kilometres away from The Farmhouse Bakery headquarters! I immediately contacted Nadine and had plans for a Food Explorer field trip, so here’s the results, I hope you enjoy it!!
INTERVIEW:
[Colleen:] Dearest readers!! I have been anxiously waiting for weeks for this to happen - I actually made it out to The Farmhouse Bakery a.k.a. The Krause Family Farm! The brutal summer heat, the prairie storms, some Saskatoon berry picking adventures and of course my hectic schedule teaching Entrepreneurship on the nearby Maskwacis Reserve had all been conspiring to keep me sidelined but NOPE! - I’m finally here near Bittern Lake, Alberta at their Little Farmhouse on the Prairie. They travel so much every week through thick and thin to bring us their fantastic baked goods to Edmonton, that it feels fitting that I can at long last get to visit them at their home base.[CDH]
I’m at the farm and as I walk into the bakery, I’m greeted by a very smiley Nadine, the head baker and chief executive of ALL the THINGS!!! :)
She’s in the middle of making fondant and not that garbage stuff that you pull off of a cake and throw away, but the freshly made stuff. “Do you want to try some when it’s ready?” Nadine asks. I absolutely do and as she’s working away on the fondant we get into a conversation.
I started by asking her when the Farmhouse Bakery was born. Well, the farm has actually been in the Krause family for many years, but it wasn’t until 2013 that Nadine and her husband Jerry took over from Jerry’s parents with the main crops being wheat, spelt, and canola and so that was their main source of income. However in 2016 disaster struck when the crops were hailed out and crop insurance only covered farm expenses, not everyday expenses that you still needed money for, and so a decision needed to be made. As Nadine put it, “I could’ve gone and tried to find a job in the city, but I had been a stay-at-home mom homeschooling my children, so Jerry suggested I start making my cinnamon buns and sell them at the farmers’ market.” And that was the simple beginning of The Farmhouse Bakery.
I asked her what the most popular items they sell are, not surprisingly it is the sourdough breads and the cinnamon buns. And those are just the year-round customer favourites and best sellers. Also, during holiday seasons they will sell big quantities of other specialty items like: Thanksgiving is all about pies and at Christmas, it’s the cookie and the baked goods platters that are most popular. Originally, they started selling just the cinnamon buns at the Camrose and Wetaskiwin farmers’ markets and it wasn’t too long afterwards that the Camrose farmers market asked Nadine if she could start making breads as well because they needed a vendor to fill that category. Nadine remembers, ”Originally, I only knew how to make Ezekiel, whole wheat, and white bread. But I’m always up for a challenge and I love learning something new so I started making different breads for the markets”. It wasn’t long after that of course people wanted sourdough. “Right now we actually make 800 to 1000 loaves of sourdough every week for the two markets that we do. Thursdays in Crossfield, and Friday, Saturday, Sunday at Bountiful market, plus people can come here to the farm on Friday or Saturday to buy items - though it’s best to pre order unless you just want to come and see what we have”. I asked about the “mother” for the sourdough and learned that Nadine circulates through three buckets of sourdough starters every week.
At this point, I’m pretty sure my head exploded because I had no idea they made that much bread every week!! “Oh that’s just the bread”. She says “we also make 500 cinnamon buns a week on top of all the other treats we have available”.
Now I better stop here and tell you a little bit about their cinnamon buns and just what makes them especially special. Besides different choices of raisins or not, different flavours, the perfect size (not too over proofed and doughy, not too small and stodgy) and the cream cheese option - when you get Farmhouse Bakery cinnamon buns, they’re always warm and if you’re thinking, “How are they always warm, Colleen?” - well, for the Crossfield market on Thursdays, Nadine actually takes them out of the oven right before they are leaving to go to the market and packs them into warm containers so that once they get to the market, they are still warm. And at Bountiful, they actually have special warming trays so that at any point in the day that you buy them, you get a warm cinnamon bun.
When I asked her why they did this, she said it's all about comfort. People love getting a warm cinnamon bun and it just brings back so many memories of having homemade cinnamon buns on the weekend or a special occasion. Because at Farmhouse they love their cinnamon buns warmed so much, they make sure that their customers can get that as well…..now back to the fondant part of our story.
At this point in my visit, Nadine had finished making the fondant and I got to try it. I was shocked at how flavourful and delightful it was to eat. I have never eaten fondant made from scratch! She laughed and asked, ”It’s good isn’t it?” but hers is so much better than good! As she continued to clean up from making her first batch of fondant, we started talking a little bit about the bakery and the philosophy behind it. Nadine: “From the moment we started, we said that our policy would be we would never freeze products. It didn’t matter what day of the week you came to the market you were always going to get something that was fresh made”. She said that with the newer customers it’s always the first questions that they ask - How fresh is this? When was this made? Has this been frozen? But of course their repeat and superfan customers know the product is always fresh. Then what do they do with extra products? “We donate it to the food bank. So we have a food bank both in Crossfield and Edmonton that will take our products and give it out to the people that need it.” [Jason:] This reminds me of one of the first times I met Nadine and I was encouraging her to raise her prices for her Artisan sourdough breads. She said she remembered scrimping for every penny and she didn’t want people to go hungry so they purposefully kept their prices affordable. Caring about people really is part of their core values there! [JMC] “Having our products never frozen, always fresh is what we have built our reputation on”. It really is a core value for them.
As we were chatting about different markets and which ones they do every week, I asked her about being at Bountiful Farmers’ market. She says that’s an interesting story as they didn’t start at Bountiful. Wait, what?? We have only known them to be at Bountiful. “Well we actually were at the Old Strathcona Farmers’ market, first. We started there in October 2018. At the end of November, we were actually approached by somebody from Bountiful market letting us know that a new three day market was going to be opening up and they wanted Farmhouse Bakery as one of their vendors. They let the idea sit and they thought on it for a little while, but they did not pursue moving to Bountiful as the work at Strathcona was keeping them very busy. In January 2019 Bountiful contacted them again and pitched their proposal for the Farmhouse Bakery to be about their farmers market. They listened and thought about it and then told them no, again! At this point, Nadine laughs. I looked at her because I have only known them to be at the Bountiful Farmers’ market! Well, now I’m on the edge of my seat, what happened? How did you end up there? “Bountiful market came back to us and said what do we need to do to get you here because we really do want you as one of our vendors,” and at that point the Farmhouse Bakery decided that they would give Bountiful a try.
They actually ended up doing both markets (Old Strathcona and Bountiful farmers market) for a few months, but once August 2019 rolled around they realized they needed to make a choice. They couldn’t do both and knew that something needed to give. “Jerry was worried about the amount of hours that I was working and I couldn’t keep up with the work. I would start work at 4 AM Friday morning and I wouldn’t stop working until 10 PM Saturday night just to have enough to sell at the market on the weekend. It was not sustainable”.
They ended up deciding that they would stay with Bountiful because one of the downsides for the Old Strathcona farmers market is that it is only one day a week. But with Bountiful being three days a week it gave customers a much bigger window to actually come and shop at the market. And they’ve been there ever since, with a wonderful permanent location right at the front door of the market.
Don’t get the idea that The Farmhouse Bakery is just Nadine with “some help” from the family - it really is a full-on family run affair. For example, her oldest son Nathaniel is a full partner and a baker and his fiancée is also a full-time employee. Their son Matthew is also a full-time employee. And their father Jerry is “the amazing wherever he needs to be” to keep it all together guy! You’ll see him pretty much every weekend at the Bountiful farmers market, along with Matthew. And this is in addition to farming!!!
As I start to get ready to leave because Nadine still had more fondant to make that night, I thought to ask her about the display cooler that they installed at the Bountiful market. Was it a good expansion for the business? “Absolutely” she says “we’re able to have all of our cream pies in there and showcase them, but also one day I hope, when I have a bit more time, I really would like to add in some of our decorated cakes.” At this point, she actually pulls out her phone and shows me an incredible wedding cake that she created a few years ago with handmade flowers. “It’s actually really important to me, like I said, to have everything from scratch. So not only do I make the fondant from scratch, but all of the sugar flowers are made from scratch and even the gum paste that I use. I love the look of these flowers and if I don’t know how to do something I learn how to do it. It’s always a fun challenge” She even had the colour swatch for the Nathaniel’s upcoming wedding so that she could colour match the flowers to it - a beautiful maroon colour. So while doing a lot of wedding cakes is not in the cards right now just because of the time that it takes, she would love to do them in the future. And I can attest that I have seen some of the decorated cupcakes she’s done seasonally and they are not only mouth-wateringly delicious but also stunning to look at!
One last thing, I needed to know - is there anything else you’d love to add to the menu? “Oh, I would love to add croissants. Actually, I did an entire Facebook series about the challenge of trying to make croissants. And puff pastries - anything of that nature is such a challenge. We have two things that hold us back. First, we need the 86% butter for the croissants.” Oh, I said you probably need a butter licence don’t you? “We actually do need one, but I just don’t have the time to look into it right now.” And the second thing that works against us is because our kitchen is so hot and humid. It’s a hard time with actually cooling and then baking up the croissants so that they don’t turn out to be a total wreck. While it would be nice. It’s not something we can focus on right now, but I am having fun playing around with it.”
We say our goodbyes and as I am heading out the door, I’m very thankful we know all the amazing people behind the Farmhouse Bakery. And we’ll be stopping by this weekend at the farmers’ market to pick something up! While Jason loves the Russian rye sourdough bread and the cinnamon buns, I am a sucker for their butterhorns! And their Carrot cake; it’s proper yummy!
[Jason:] Of course there’s so much more to love at The Farmhouse Bakery - so check out their website for a concise product list, maybe follow them on IG or keep up with them almost daily on their Facebook page where Nadine always has the latest market information and answers personally to comments :) Plus, if you’re interested in farm life check out Krause Farms page for some Matthew’s fantastic drone footage and other interesting video segments from the Krause Family’s farm. It’s not quite Little House on the Prairie but we think The Krause Family Farm offers a modern-day slice of that nostalgia and spirit of family pride and prairie community that really drives local farmers’ markets lucky enough to have vendors like them. [JMC]
Pictured below: From the Tomato’s TOP 100 Things to Eat in Edmonton!