This spring has been a busy time for Against the Grain. Soon to be re-christened Evergrain due to a pre-existing copyright on the ATG brand, Against the Grain’s head baker/owner Doug Rae has neither allowed this potential identity crisis to slow down business, or indeed, keep it from expanding into the neighboring storefront. With renovations underway, Doug welcomed a much needed second baker to his team, Tony Stein.
A native of San Diego, California, Tony lived in LA after graduating in 2011 from UCLA with a anthropology degree. After graduation Tony managed to land a job working as a baker in the kitchen of Thomas Keller’s Beverly Hills bistro, Bouchon, where he eventually met Doug on a kitchen tour. Hitting it off almost immediately, Doug knew within days that he wanted Tony in his bakery.
In the following interview, Tony was able to fight back the drowsiness brought on by his last shift to tell us a little about his bread baking journey from Beverly Hills to Chestertown, and the odd burnt baguette in between.
Spy: Were you interested in baking before you became an anthropologist?
Tony: No (laughs) I always cooked, and that was the most shocking part for me, because I actually only have four weeks of culinary education, and that was in savory. My whole life I’ve worked as a savory cook, although I had made truffles and cheesecakes before. As for baking, in my senior year of college, I made a baguette, it was about a third of the size of a real baguette, on a sheet pan in my home oven–with no steam, nothing. But I always loved baguettes and loved bread. So at one point, I thought ‘how do you even create those flavors?’ And I looked it up and the ingredients were just flour, water, salt, and yeast. And I thought ‘no way in hell can you make something that tastes that good with nothing, with ingredients that on their own are either just boring or completely unpalatable.’ Like flour and salt and yeast, you don’t just eat those things by themselves.
Spy: But I eat yeast…Vegemite, Marmite. Think of our Australian readers.
Tony: Yeah, I know we want to bring in that Aussie market too. So I made a baguette with those ingredients, and it tasted terrible and was dense and didn’t look anything like a baguette should. Instead of cutting it the long way, I cut it in a way that was perpendicular to the baguette. It looked ridiculous. But it was my first one, it was my baby, and I wanted to make it right.
Spy: Did you eat your baby?
Tony: Absolutely I did! You have to eat successes and failures just the same. When I make something and it’s terrible and burnt and wrong, I try to eat as much of it as I can, just so I don’t make that mistake again.
Spy: Yes, makes for a steep learning curve.
Tony: Exactly. And you eat your successes too, because they are delicious.
Spy: Beyond the compatibility of you and Doug’s personalities, did anything else motivate you to make the move from the west to east coast? LA to Chestertown is quite a contrast…
Tony: Any chance you have to leave your current situation, assuming you aren’t leaving anything outstanding or unfinished, whenever you can put yourself in a situation that your completely uncomfortable in, you can gain so much. It forces you to grow, in ways that I never could have believed. And, I feel as though I took L.A. as far as I was willing to take it, being a citizen of that town, I was over with it. Also, it was really just the magic of meeting Doug.
Spy: In the best case scenario, the bakery expansion will be complete before Tea Party Weekend, are you and Doug collaborating on ways to use this new space?
Tony: Well, I really want to know that I can execute Doug’s vision before I start adding things and we start collaborating. I need to know that I can create it his way first. But he’s let me play around with a couple of pastry ideas so far, and that’s been fun.
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