On April 30, the Redmond Reporter got a “bread-u-cation” from Ross and Elizabeth Tasche, a young Redmond couple who’ve started an old-fashioned business called Home Bread.
As the name suggests, they make home-style bread in a commercial kitchen at their home. It’s baked in a brick oven which Ross and his dad built in their yard near Ames Lake.
“The style of the oven dates back to the Roman era and our bread is fashioned in an ancient way, as well,” Elizabeth explained. “My husband mixes all the dough by hand and we use a natural sourdough culture for leavening and flavor, rather than commercial or hybridized yeast. No one on the coast is doing this because it takes a full day for the culture — yeast and bacteria — to do its work, but the flavor and health benefits are fantastic.”
Presently, Ross works at a grocery store three days a week and the couple is selling Home Bread only at the Redmond Saturday Market, but would like to take the concept into a full-time operation.
The Tasches met as English majors at Westmont College in Santa Barbara. After marrying straight out of college, they spent time living in Greece and Austria, where Ross loved working as a cook and the European lifestyle, especially the friendly, local markets and the ways that people of different generations happily spend time together. But when Ross couldn’t get a work visa, they returned to Washington state, where they live with his parents and their two young daughters.
He likes to think of Home Bread’s products and the affectionate environment in which they’re produced as “bringing bread back as the staff of life” and added, “The best times are spent here with my family.”
Noting that nearly every grocery store now claims to sell “artisan bread,” he chuckled, “What is artisan bread, anyway?”
He uses a wild yeast, and unbromiated/unbleached, locally-grown grains which he grinds in his own stone mill “in a cold mill process to keep vitamins in. I have a personal connection with a miller. No one has their own miller anymore,” he marveled.
The Tasches are selling their Home Bread in three sizes, priced at $3, $5 and $7 and plan to bring 60-70 loaves to the Redmond Saturday Market each week. The market is open from 9 a.m.- 3 p.m. at 7730 Leary Way, the Northwest corner of Redmond Town Center.
