Wave Hill Breads Rises in Norwalk

You can spot them at farmer’s markets from Litchfield to Rowayton, at top restaurants and fine food shops from New Haven to Greenwich and the wave is carrying them to Brooklyn and beyond.

The wave is the word-of-mouth popularity of the artisanal loaves of hand-shaped crusty breads that go by the name of Wave Hill.

Since June 22, Wave Hill Breads has been baking up to 1,000 loaves a day in new quarters at 30 High St. in the central Norwalk business district.

Online endorsements by the likes of celebrity road epicurean Michael Stern (“It is a gorgeous loaf with a rugged, muscular crust and dense insides that provide just the right tooth resistance for complete bread enjoyment”) and universal popularity have fed the need for expansion from a smaller bakery in Wilton (1,100 square feet) to the present 3,200-square-foot space.

From M.B.A.s to masterful bread artisans

Wave Hill Breads is the creation of the husband-and-wife team of Mitchell Rapoport and Margaret Safir, both successful businesspeople with M.B.A.s from New York’s Stern School of Business who detoured into serious breadmaking as apprentices to a master they discovered in Stowe, Vermont, Gerard Rubaud.

The name Wave Hill is taken from the 28-acre botanical estate overlooking the Hudson River just north of Manhattan where Rapoport and Sapir married 28 years ago. (They have a son, Jared, a student at Skidmore, who works farmer’s markets selling bread in the summer.)

The name Wave Hill suggests many apt metaphors.

One is the distinctive ridge (in French, the grigne) cut diagonally across the face of the mainstay Pain de Campagne (French country loaf), like a cresting wave. (Carved as a last step before baking, the slit enables the proper escape of gas and resulting chewy texture within the crusty shell, explains Wave Hill’s master baker Mike Devlin.)

Another is the wave of popularity that is causing the business to rapidly expand in the metropolitan area, both in terms of loaf production and varieties of loaves. (A midnight truck delivers to a stopover point in Brooklyn and thence to 25 upscale food markets in New Jersey.)

Love and loaves

Multi-grain loaves and olive-and-roasted red pepper Ciabattas are among the new introductions (the latter pronounced by foodie Stern as one of the top three “breads of the world”).

“We want to be known for particular things and making best of a kind,” Safir acknowledged during a recent tour of the new bakery.

The Norwalk headquarters will soon expand to include a small café offering croissants and bialys baked on the premises, together with locally-produced cheeses and jams. Renovations are already underway.

A love for providing hospitality and sharing conversation with customers in four languages (Safir is fluent in French and Spanish, Rapoport in Mandarin Chinese) give Safir and Rapoport an immense sense of satisfaction.

“The word ‘company’ comes from ‘co’ (with) and ‘panis’ or ‘pane’ (bread),” she points out.

“Bringing joy to others – that’s great!” she says.

Artisanal chemistry

Wave Hill bread ingredients are simple, but the process is both artful and scientific.

To create the French country loaf, unbleached, enriched wheat flour is mixed with yeast, water and touches of sea salt, together with organic spelt berries and organic rye berries milled on-site daily.

“0 trans fats, 0 preservatives, 100-percent wholesome,” says the label on the pale beige bag, itself “recyclable, biodegradable and compostable.”

The bread-baking process is a 12-hour labor of love.

Milling the spelt berries yields a wild yeast that adds to texture and flavor.

Pre-fermenting the bread mix (poolish) for three hours and devoting a total of eight hours to fermentation are steps that contribute to the “complexity and richness of flavor,” as Sapir puts it.

The prominent air pockets are a testament to the very elastic nature of the dough and its high water content.

“During baking, the heat turns the water to steam and gelatizes and sets the starch,” explained Devlin, whose background includes stints at the Beverly Hills Hotel as master pastry chef, head baker at Universal Studios in Hollywood and, locally, as pastry chef at The Dressing Room in Westport.

A giant oven, manufactured in Germany and shipped here by container, commands an awesome presence in the kitchen.

That's logistics

Assembling the components for the new kitchen, obtaining all the permits, coordinating with electricians, plumbers and contractors all had to be done before the Norwalk kitchen could start cooking, Devlin said.

On the day of the move from Wilton, as the last loaves of the evening were slid from the oven, delivery trucks hustled them away to diverse customers and, by day’s end, the next batch was baking in Norwalk.

“We didn’t lose a day of baking,” Devlin recalls. “It was one of our better moments.”

Wave Hill Breads

30 High St., Norwalk

(203) 762-9595

Farmer’s market schedules and customer locations are listed on the company website.

Retail prices range from $3.25 for the little round boule to $6 for the original 10-ounce Pain de Campagne and ciabatta.

This article orginally appeared in Norwalk Patch