Evanston's Hewn Bread Bakes Up A Fresh Idea Using Old-School Techniques

By Selena Fragassi in Food on Jun 21, 2015 4:00PM

You might call Evanston’s Hewn the new sliced bread. Yet the bakeshop’s growing popularity as a local purveyor of completely handmade, super fresh, seasonal loaves is pretty old school. As in centuries old. “This is how bread used to be made,” assures Ellen King, co-owner and head baker of her old-fashioned tactics like abstaining from a proofing room and instant yeast in favor of a two-day, from-scratch method of mixing, baking and shaping everything by hand.

“We have to be patient with the way we make the bread and just let it do its thing,” she says of the process that begins with a naturally fermented starter dough that sits for 20 hours where its allowed to rise naturally. Most bakeries nowadays don’t have time for this kind of timetable, but King says it’s worth it for a richer flavor.

The idea started with an “underground bread club” King ran out of her house in Evanston. After having moved from Seattle, the classically trained chef wanted to continue her bread making hobby, “but it started getting to a new level where we couldn’t eat this much at home. I started to sell it to friends and people at my son’s school.” That’s where King met Wilmette resident Julie Matthei. The two became friends and, at a Cubs game, came up with the idea to start Hewn. “We wanted a neighborhood bakery,” says Matthei who is co-owner and director of business operations.

Though it’s still a smaller operation, Hewn has grown considerably in the past two years of business. There is now another full-time baker to assist King as well as a staff of seven baristas that serves Counter Culture Coffee. Hewn has also expanded to serving sandwiches during the week using Homestead Meats and, most recently, has started to sell cheeses sourced from Iowa and Wisconsin.

A huge part of the philosophy of Hewn is to be a local business that supports other local businesses. So in addition to getting all their organic grains from neighboring areas like Rockford and Madison, Wisconsin, King also partners with a few of Evanston’s breweries such as Temperance, Sketchbook and Peckish Pig to use their spent grains for loaves (they even created a beer bread for Father’s Day). The connections have paid off for Hewn - they now have a wholesale side business that delivers bread to hot spots in Evanston such as Found Kitchen, Boltwood and Union. Wicker Park’s Bom Bolla recently also started buying from Hewn.

“There’s always something interesting going on,” admits King, which includes a varying weekly schedule of 4-5 fresh options a day that gives customers a chance to mix it up. The schedule is posted on social media, but regulars know that challah is available every Friday, monkey bread is a weekend staple and the Nutella brioche is a daily must-have. Pastries are also available including hand-rolled croissants and fruit galettes made with produce from the local farmer’s market. It’s all a way of giving the customers what they want while reintroducing classic baking methods, or as King and Matthei call it, “hewn: a way to connect the past with the future.”

If you want to hear even more about this unique relationship listen to King’s chat on NPR’s Worldview about using age-old red ancient grains from Turkey and how that can actually help for those with gluten sensitivities.

Hewn is located at 810 Dempster Street in Evanston. Visit hewnbread.com for hours and more information.