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Brio Bakery is owned and operated by Todd Barraclough in Edmonton, Alberta. He focuses on natural levain artisan sourdough breads and viennoserie.
You can find Brio Bakery products at the City Market Downtown at the 104th Street (outdoor during the summer) and City Hall (indoor during the winter) locations. To learn more about Brio Bakery, check out their website or follow them on Facebook or Twitter.
How Brio Bakery began:
Around 2006, Todd decided to leave his job as a dental technician to care for his two young daughters at home. While at home, Todd began baking bread for his family and that love turned into an obsession with artisan bread baking. He completed a two-year business diploma at NAIT and has taken courses on sourdough bread and viennoiserie at the San Francisco Baking Institute.
Todd uses a natural levain (which means he’s making the yeast for his baking himself) in his long fermentation baking process. Since this style of baking is not very common in the area, he finds that many of his new customers are both surprised and delighted by the uniqueness of his products.
His loaves are made with only three ingredients: flour, water and salt. While these ingredients may seem simple on the surface, they combine to make a delicious loaf with complex flavours. In fact, it’s this complexity of flavour that initially made Todd fall in love with this style of bread and immerse himself in the process.
His connection to the community and customers:
Todd began by selling extra bread to his neighbours and, through word of mouth, his business began to grow. One of the biggest challenges he’s encountered is how to scale up the recipes he has honed in his home-kitchen to commercial size batches of bread. His product line includes a variety of sourdoughs (traditional, multigrain, olive, walnut raisin, whole wheat, rye, and spelt) and a rotating selection of viennoiserie (butter croissants, chocolate croissants, almond croissants, danish, brioche, etc.). On an average Saturday, Todd brings roughly 150-180 loaves of bread and 200 croissants to the City Market Downtown.
He loves selling at markets because of the direct interaction with his supporters. Seeing customers return week after week is really what helps drive his passion, and their feedback focuses his menu. Todd likes having the flexibility to tweak his product line to suit the market. He’s learning what groups of customers like to purchase and that helps determine what kinds of loaves he brings to market. From making the natural levain, to how the final pieces are displayed for sale, Todd enjoys being able to be involved with the whole process of creating and selling his product.
Part of the reason Todd chose to sell his products at farmers’ markets is because he believes it’s a great incubator for small start-up businesses, and a fantastic way to test the market demand for products. It has allowed him to make his products available to his customers while building up his plans for the future of Brio Bakery.
The future of Brio Bakery:
Being a year-round business in a seasonal farmers’ market has its challenges. Weather conditions directly impact sales at many of the outdoor summer markets and that can be difficult to adapt to. In the future, Todd would love to have his own brick-and-mortar storefront.
A retail shop would allow Todd to have more days of sales and more creativity with his product line. Already, many of his customers are looking to purchase Brio Bakery products outside of the Saturday farmers’ market.
“A lot of people tell me it’s the best bread they’ve ever had. I don’t know if that’s true, but I think it’s pretty good bread and it makes me pretty happy to hear it.” – Todd Barraclough
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