Baker for 30 years

After 30 years of getting up in the middle of the night and going off to work in the dark, Vern Bott has grown used to it, or at least inured to the routine.

Bott is a baker, an in-store baker to be precise, and for most of his working life he’s been at Rosauers Supermarkets.

He’s currently at the Browne’s Addition branch of Rosauers at Third Avenue and Oak Street. His baking stint begins at 12:30 a.m. and ends at 9:30 a.m.

Even though the store opens for business at 5 a.m., Bott and customers don’t often interact. He is usually on his way home for his morning nap before many of them arrive to shop.

Bott came to Spokane from Southern Idaho. He grew up in Rupert, “and Paul,” he adds, came to Spokane at 19 and attended Spokane Community College and its baking program for two years. He went to work in markets almost immediately after completing the SCC program, baking in a couple of other stores before settling in at Rosauers.

The night work, day sleeping routine has become a habit. His morning nap last about two-plus hours. “On my days off I’m ready for a nap in the middle of the morning,” he says.

Then in the evening he’s in bed about 6:30, up at 11 and off to work. Again, on days off, it’s difficult sleeping in. “You get used to it, but you don’t like it.”

At work in the middle of the night, there’s solitude and serenity, right? Well, not really. “It’s noisy,” Bott says. “We have mixers going and the ovens, they’re convection ovens, and they’re noisy.”

Bott works with one baker, sometimes two, and “We make everything,” he says. And that ranges from bread, doughnuts, cookies, Danish to cakes and pastries. Bott doubles at decorating cakes on the decorator’s days off. “Not everybody does that,” he said.

As for sampling all the warm, fresh baked good fresh out of the ovens, Bott said he doesn’t succumb to that. “When we try something new, I might taste it to see how it came out,” he said.

And part of his baking is instinctive, anything with dough involved, for example. “You can tell its right by the look and touch. You just know,” he said.

Cleanup is an onerous part of his work, Bott said. “It’s a lot easier to make a mess than it is to clean it up.”