They kneaded a change
NESTLED IN THE SELKIRK MOUNTAINS, surrounded by national forest, Scott and Joyce Coogan’s new home is prime habitat for black bears and grizzlies, who occasionally amble across the property.
It’s a big change from Connecticut, where the Coogans decided to abandon their hectic, professional lives.
Now, one day a week, the Coogans are up early making a living at what they say God brought them to do in their current country home. Every Wednesday, at 3 a.m., Scott is up making bread in their outdoor oven heated by wood to sell at the Sandpoint Farmers Market by midafternoon.
The morning ritual starts with weighing the flour they buy from Azure Co-op of Oregon. Then, kneading the dough by hand, Scott makes up to 100 loaves of bread that are baked that morning before heading off to the market. The oven is lit Monday night on the brick floor and the fire is stoked all day Tuesday. After reaching temperatures nearing 1,000 degrees Fahrenheit, the fire is pulled out by a forge-safe rake and mopped out. The heat sterilizes the oven where the bread is laid.
The oven looks like a huge igloo that’s built off the ground with storage underneath to hold the wood. A round roof reaching about 6 feet high and 5 feet across, made out of fire bricks and concrete, makes “the oven very energy-efficient,” said Joyce. “It can hold up to 20 loaves of bread.”
“Scott designed the oven like a pizza style merely by accident. And what happened is the focaccia bread is one of our hottest-selling items,” explains Joyce. “We try to use every asset of the oven and heat.”
The Coogans start their baking with focaccia bread when the oven is at its hottest. Then they progressively cook different types of wholesome, European-style bread until it is cool enough to cook the sweet breads. The next day, as the oven has substantially cooled, cereal mixes are baked.
Breads are made out of whole hard red wheat and hard white wheat, kamut and unbleached wheat flour. They have their popular focaccia pizzas, kamut bread, whole-wheat bread, onion bread and cinnamon rolls, plus healthy granola breakfast mixes.
Additionally, before market day, they make spreads such as pumpkin seed, coconut butter and olive tapenade.
The Coogans have two children, and the older one, 9-year-old Jarad, is now getting into making cinnamon rolls and handing out samples to customers at the market. Their 2-year-old daughter, Bethany, cannot get enough bread. Aside from the free samples, Bethany makes the best sales pitch, eating piece after piece like most kids eat cotton candy at a fair.
Making bread is something the Coogans never thought they would do. “But we thought it was part of our faith walk,” said Joyce.
Before moving to the country, Joyce was an account manager and make-up artist for Revlon. Scott worked for a huge chemical plant as an instrument control technician and had an electrical license in New Hampshire.
“Living two hours from New York and Boston, we just did a 360-degree change. For our children’s sake, our health’s sake and for our marriage we decided to move to the country … to hear the voice of God,” said Joyce.
Selling everything and packing only a 24-foot Ryder truck, they moved from a busy city life to Porthill, Idaho, on the Canadian border, in July 2000.
“We planned not to work for three years and just follow our faith walk,” explains Joyce. “By browsing through a magazine, I saw a picture of a man in the country making bread in an earthen oven.”
She told her husband and he said, “I’ll put that on my things to do list in the next three years.”
“As it happens,” she said, “that very same day, we went for a walk, met a neighbor, and shared some bread made out of a small brick oven.
“We looked around and wondered if our neighbors would like good, healthy, organic European-style bread,” she said.
After some research, Scott designed and made a brick oven.
“The first breads we made, we burned and we had to start over,” Joyce said.
With more research at the library and some experiments, they finally came up with several successful products to sell at the market.
After two years, the Coogans now are living within their means, baking bread one day a week and covering all their bills. When they are not selling to the farmers market in the summer, they sell to a market in Bonners Ferry and have a following of customers who buy from them all winter long.
“It’s a great life,” she said, of raising their children with father at home, “good values and faith … and a family business for the kids to learn and have when they get older.”
To try their bread, visit Sandpoint’s farmers market on Wednesdays from 3 to 5:30 p.m. and look for the family handing out bread samples. Their business is called the House of Bread.