CONCORD -- Alex Brown wakes up before his family, treads downstairs, brews a pot of coffee and shapes dough into loaves on his kitchen counter.
As his two children and his wife start their mornings, Brown puts the dough in the fridge to proof and gets ready for his day job as a psychologist. After work in the evenings, he heats up the oven and bakes three sets of loaves, two at a time.
Brown began a small bread business called Conquered Bread this fall, channeling his passion for baking into a means of connecting with the Concord community. His business model includes selling bread subscriptions by month, with customers picking up one loaf of bread a week from the large box by the door to Brown's house.
"It has rewarded me," said Brown, who has been making bread for years, even prior to the pandemic. "As someone who is creative, but not particularly artistic, I don't have a lot of ways to express myself, and this has ended up being a really cool way to do that."
He's started small, baking about 18 loaves per week, but with the installation of a new masonry oven in his kitchen, he'll double his capacity next month and is poised to grow as word spreads.
Brown describes the business, with its intentional play on the pronunciation of Concord, as a "micro-bakery home kitchen side hustle and bread share." He recently acquired a food service license allowing for home production.
"I'm making elemental bread. I'm a minimalist," said Brown, who crafts his sourdough loaves from his own freshly milled flour and grain sourced from around New England. "I like the idea of lean doughs, which means that basically all of my bread is flour, water and salt, and then every now and then I throw in a little inclusion here and there. But usually, my bread has less than five ingredients."
Every loaf undergoes a long fermentation process, enriching the flavor. Brown's three staple loaves are Concord Blonde, Country Porridge and Beekeeper's Rye. He also makes bagels, focaccia, pane siciliano and a variety of other breads, such as black coffee rye, potato and roasted onion, and carrot walnut.
Bread for a cause
Conquered Bread is in the process of launching its Rise Up project, which donates proceeds from loaves purchased outside of the monthly shares to different area organizations. To begin the project, Brown chose Equality Health Center as the first beneficiary.
"I think bringing awareness to groups of people who are vulnerable and disenfranchised and systematically put at risk, it just feels like the right thing to do," he said.
Since not every customer can commit to a month's subscription, these Rise Up loaves will make Brown's bread more accessible. Labeled "Baked for Social Justice," they will be available for individual purchase.
Linda Haller, who serves as medical director of Equality Health Center, said the business's partnership with the health center unites the two with "an identity of community, connection and compassion."
"There's a solidarity there to create something out of nothing, using flour, yeast, salt, and combining those things together to make something beautiful, and to be able to share that with people, but beyond that, financially support a community organization that is essentially doing the same thing just in health care," she said. "We have clinicians, nurses, organizing staff coming together to create this beautiful entity that is ultimately here to serve the community and take good care of people."
She has been friends with Brown for years and recalls how he often delivered bread to friends' doorsteps during the pandemic.
"He really took it and ran with it and has created a beautiful little business," Haller added. "The piece I really connect with and feel most attached to is the community aspect of it. It's very personable. It's very friendly and familiar. He also makes fantastic bread."
'This sense of specialness'
Another friend, city councilor Judith Kurtz, has enjoyed seeing Conquered Bread transform from an idea into a fully functioning micro-bakery.
"Having fresh bread made by someone you know or know tangentially in the community creates this feeling of community care," Kurtz said. "There's someone in your neighborhood or your community doing this thing on however small a scale that's contributing to your dinner table or your gathering. I feel that way about all local businesses. Really just thinking about being connected to place and having a sense of what makes our community special."
Beginning this weekend, loaves from Conquered Bread will be available for purchase at Table, a new bakery in Eagle Square. Kurtz encouraged people to support local businesses such as Brown's and added that small-scale endeavors like Conquered Bread and Table can have a widespread impact.
"It's even more intimate because you know it's made in his home and it's on a small scale, so there's this sense of specialness that will go with it," Kurtz said.
When packaging bread for customers, Brown prioritizes environmental sustainability. He wraps his loaves in bags made of recycled paper and offers customers instructions for how to best store the loaves.
"It's basically impossible to buy a loaf of bread that doesn't come in single-use plastic, and I find that totally unacceptable," he said.
While working a full-time job and running a side business has the potential to be exhausting, Brown says the bread fits into his schedule.
"I've tucked it all into the corners of my life that were already there," he said.
Mostly, he just enjoys the process and the way the community has grown excited about his bread shares.
"I like working with my hands," Brown added. "I work quite a lot collaboratively, and I realized that one of the things that bread does for me that I don't get in other parts of my life is that it's something that I can do by myself. It's not something that I need to rely on other people for."