Five Points Bakery……..what can I say that hasn’t already been said? I mean, there have been 13 other stories written about them in the last year that I been able to find on the internet. Trust me, this is not overkill. I am deeply compelled to continue singing the praises already bestowed on them.
    In March of 2009 I visited Urban Roots Co op garden center. I noticed that there was quite a bit of activity going on in the adjoining store. I asked Michael who was moving in. He stated a bakery.

     Why it took me almost a year to get back, I’ll never quite know. It’s not like I hadn’t been near there. I had been to Lexington Co op and Guercio’s more times than I can count.  This particular trip had me in search of Thai Pink Egg Tomato seeds from Richard Price’s Faerie Garden Seeds. Lexington co op had run out, so off to Urban Roots I went.
     I was greeted by the intoxicating scent of cinnamon rolls as I entered the store. After making my seed purchase, I followed the pied piper over to Five Points Bakery.
     Behind the counter, Melissa Gardner was carefully bagging a customer’s purchase of multi grain bread. Behind her, Kevin (Melissa’s husband) was rotating willow rising baskets with more of the same. Sunshine streamed in through the front glass, lighting up the rows of canning jars on the shelves.
     While Five Points Bakery is named after the five point intersection of Rhode Island, West Utica and Brayton streets, I (of course!) felt it was a sign from the goddess. The five points of the pentacle symbolize the five elements: earth, air, fire, water and spirit. In item that is baked at Five Points, you can literally taste them. From the earth the local wheat is grown in to the wind that carries the bees for the honey. From the fire of the ovens, not to mention the sun that warms the earth, to the rain that nourishes the seedlings. Most important is the spirit that goes into the labor. How much more spirit can you put into a loaf of bread than the energy of two people actually milling the flour right there, right in the store? The Gardner’s actually have a Samap natural stone mill.
     Almost all of the ingredients for the Gardner’s offerings are locally sourced.  Five Points buys their wheat from growers in Hamburg, Hunt and Kendell NY. Eggs come in from Colden, butter from Moravia, veggies from good ol’ Alden. The greatest thing about shopping at Five Points is that you don’t have to ask or guess about the origins of the offerings. You know that everything is either local or fair trade. Back to that shelf of canning jars: contained within vintage glass top jars are oats, beans and homemade brown sugar to name just a few things. I buy a lot of canning jars at yard sales or thrift stores. Over the years I hard amassed a few dozen glass tops. I brought them with me my next trip. Kevin and Melissa charge a small deposit for the jars, but a fair amount don’t make it back. It felt good to give them a home. The cinnamon rolls Melissa gave me in return were an unexpected, but delightful treat.

     Five Points offers “shares” of bread. You can subscribe for a full year or per quarter. What you get is a weekly care package of selected items. If you cannot get into the city on a weekly basis, or if you think you just cannot eat that many baked goods, just stop in and pick up a loaf (or two, or three!). While you are there, check out the cooler. Inside you will find locally raised beef, pasture raised eggs and milk that actually has the cream on top. Trust me, it’s worth the trip! 

 Five points Bakery                                                                                          
 426 Rhode Island St
 Buffalo NY 14213
 716-884-8888

“There are people in this world so hungry that god cannot appear to them except in the form of bread” Mahatma Gandhi

       Bread is truly a spiritual experience. Many cultures break bread as a symbol of friendship. Prayers state “give us this day our daily bread”.
      I consider myself a bread snob. I say this with pride, not a crumb of shame. I grew up on Wonder bread. Lifeless, hardly filling, no flavour at all to it. The label bragged of all the vitamins and minerals contained within the brightly coloured package. I never could quite figure out how it was good for you.
      On occasion, my mother would buy Rich’s frozen bread dough. She would thaw, rise and bake a loaf on a cold winter day. We have a lot of those in Buffalo. You’d have to wait until it cooled enough to slice, otherwise it (a lot like the Wonderbread) would mush into a tiny ball. I was happy to rip off a chunk and cover it in butter, the hotter the better. While I enjoyed that fresh baked bread, I still felt a lacking. Why was it that it didn’t quite fill me up? Why did it not taste like anything until you covered it with jam?
      We had a neighbor who had come to the US from Poland. Mrs. Moulgilski was a tiny woman. If she stood 4 ½ ft, I would be surprised. I often wondered if she had always been small, or if over her 90 some odd years, gravity and a hard life had helped that along. Mrs. Moulgilski baked bread. I mean she REALLY baked bread. That little old woman bashed and kneaded and pulled strange black dough. She beat it into submission, fashioning it into loaves and baking it in an oven you had to light with a match. She would bring some over to my grandmother when they shared a weekly cup of coffee. I was always afraid of that bread. Why on earth did she have to treat it so harsh to make it edible? One day I decided to brave the unknown and try it. The beast would not easily cut, not tear. Rather it had to be sawed with that large knife Nana kept in a special spot of the tableware drawer. I gingerly put a piece in my mouth, very quickly reverting to an animal like state, ripping it and chewing like I had not eaten in a month. It was, indeed a spiritual experience. A lowly peasant loaf had awakened my senses. Such was the beginning of my love affair with pumpernickel.
     Over the years I have made many a loaf. I have tried just about every flour found in the grocery aisle. I have grabbed up pouches of unheard of grains from the health food store like a pirate raids a treasure. Some combinations were noteworthy, others became bird feed.
    I have traveled to many cities around the US. In each, I have sought out the signature style of that staff of life known as bread. Little did I know that I would end my quest for the perfect loaf right in my old back yard: Five Points Bakery, Buffalo NY.