Indiana baker brings community together
Husband and wife-team Eric Schedler and Katie Zukof started Muddy Fork Bakery at their farm on the outskirts of Bloomington, IN in 2010, shortly after the state approved sales of home-baked goods. Their creations were so popular that their home bakery quickly bloomed into a local enterprise that now employs seven people.
Eric developed a love for bread when he was a high school exchange student in Germany and took up sourdough baking upon returning to the States. When he and Katie—who has a background in foreign languages, food production, and sustainability—started baking for the farmers’ market, they began with fresh flour from a mill 30 miles away in Seymour and never turned back from that local imperative. Now Eric and Katie source grain mostly from Janie's Farm in Ashkum, IL, and fresh mill their own whole grain flour in their bakery. If a recipe calls for sifted flour (which is whole kernel flour with some of the bran and germ removed), that comes from Janie's Mill.
Side note: Muddy Fork and Janie’s Mill partnered last month on a talk for the Hoosier Young Farmers Coalition: Navigating Online Sales. Watch it here
Wood-fired baking is as important to the bread production process at Muddy Fork as fresh milling. The bakery was such an immediate success that before the first year passed, they were able to build a wood-fired oven in a new building on the farm to house the business. Unfortunately, four years in, that building burnt to the ground (no one was hurt!); within months, Eric and Katie rebuilt, a testament to their strong community support.
Muddy Fork was one of the first bakeries to join AGC’s Neighbor Loaves initiative, baking bread for a local food pantry, Mother Hubbard’s Cupboard.
Doing so not only stabilized operations for the bakery, which has been consistently producing 75 Neighbor Loaves each week, it also allowed them to increase hours for their part-time bakers who’d lost work elsewhere due to the pandemic.
As much as the community believes in the bakery, this bakery believes in their community. When the partner of one of Muddy Fork’s employees was exposed to COVID-19, the potentially affected worker was given sick pay for quarantine. Like many of their peer craft bakeries across the country, Muddy Fork is as committed to being a good employer as they are to making wonderful bread.
Following the murder of George Floyd, Muddy Fork started donating $1 from each online-purchased loaf to racial justice groups and also participated in the Bakers Against Racism Bake Sale last month. The primary beneficiary of these funds was Chef Adrian Lipscombe’s 40 Acres and a Mule Project, which has raised over $100,000 since early June. Adrian will use the funds to buy farmland in Wisconsin to provide area restaurants with an additional source for locally-grown crops and to preserve Black foodways.
Check out Muddy Fork’s website and social channels at the links below to stay up to date with Eric and Katie’s goings on. Besides discovering photos of beautiful bread, you’ll learn the intimate details of their baking process, and have an opportunity to sign up for an upcoming virtual class. The next two on the schedule cover artisan baking at home and a primer on how to make your own croissants. We're so thrilled that Muddy Fork is part of the AGC community and our first Indiana member!
