There are not many places where one can text an order to a baker and arrive a few hours later to pick up a steaming loaf of fresh bread.
For about 10 weeks, though, that’s exactly what has happened at Hollister resident Lisa Jensen’s Suncoast Organic Farm Bakery, a wholesale operation that makes hearty, organic bread with no preservatives or fillers using a wood-fired oven inside a restored 100-year-old barn.
The almost entirely solar- and wood-powered bakery has no set hours but when the baker is in, she happily shares her wares with the residents of San Benito County.
“People will text me their orders and then I’ll text them when it’s out of the oven,” she said.
Jensen formerly worked in the radio industry in Stockton when it was a Top 40 market and briefly worked in Minnesota before returning to California because she missed the good weather, her family and the farming lifestyle of her youth.
“My stepfather said, ‘What do you want to do’ because I wanted to get out of radio. And I said, ‘I’d love to bake.’ And he said, ‘What if I build you a bakery?’”
That was six years ago. The barn took three years to restore as eight-foot sections were lifted off the ground so a foundation could be added underneath.
The barn sits on her stepfather’s ranch off Southside Road, a 27-acre property that’s home to at least 120 fruit trees and more than 600 olive trees, which produce enough fruit for hundreds of bottles of olive oil most years.
The olives are her stepfather Gary Miller’s passion – evident from the “Olive Oil Made with Love” sign in the farmhouse kitchen – but Jensen uses the homemade liquid gold in her bread doughs.
“People say they are farm to table,” Jensen said. “We are truly farm to table.”
She isn’t kidding. Jensen’s family recently installed a greenhouse, where they plan to start growing their own ginger and vanilla starting next year.
“My main thing is I want to grow vanilla where I can say where it comes from,” she said.
For Jensen, baking is a full-time job. Thursday is typically the milling day when she takes seven or eight whole grains and grinds them into flour, so that she can use the freshest ingredients with the most nutritional value in her breads.
“You just walk home that night and it’s flour everywhere,” said her husband, David Jensen.
On Friday, Jensen typically preps the dough for her bakery items and Saturday she bakes in the wood-fired oven for more than 11 hours. Jensen loves seeing the reactions of the people who taste her bread.
“Being Italian, I kind of have a history of wanting to feed people,” she said.
The mainstays of the bakery are more than 20 varieties of bread, fire-roasted granola and five kinds of graham crackers in pumpkin, ginger, honey, chocolate and peanut butter flavors. Seasonal specialty items include holiday pies, cheesecakes and occasional soups.
During a typical weekend, Jensen bakes 500 loaves of bread. She specializes in exotic forms of sourdough including serrano chile, white wheat, superseded and nine-grain varieties.
On Saturdays, the bakery’s six- to eight-inch cinnamon rolls made with olive oil dough and smothered in cream cheese frosting are a popular item as people wait for their orders. Like any true baker, Jensen knows the best food discoveries come with experimentation. The bakery’s first cinnamon rolls – now called the “Hot Mess” – were originally made with extra breakfast pie dough and while they weren’t tidy looking, the taste was good enough to keep people coming back for more.
“My husband is like ‘Don’t call it a hot mess,’ but I think it’s funny,” she said.
Jensen is already dreaming up new plans for the next year. She’s eyeing the old walnut barn on the property and imagining a brewery that would produce “The Nuthouse Brew,” a name given in honor of the barn’s origins, not the personality of her family.
“Not because we are crazy,” said Jensen, as she paused, then smiled. “But maybe because we’re crazy.”
For more on her breads:
Jensen’s breads are also available at the Sunday Mountain View Farmers’ Market – where she has sold bakery items for three years – and from 3 p.m. to 7 p.m. Fridays at The Farm Bertuccio’s Market located at 2410 Airline Highway in Hollister. For more information go to the farm’s website: suncoastorganicfarm.com. To text your order, send a message to (831)801-0085.
