WildFlour Pastry, Charleston, SC

“Sticky Bun Sunday” has such a nice ring to it. Join the happy crowd smacking sticky fingers at this neighborhood treasure in historic Charleston.

story & photos by Bakery Boy

The main attraction on Sticky Bun Sundays at WildFlour Pastry in Charleston, SC

Friends meet up at WildFlour Pastry

The Sunday morning line at WildFlour Pastry stretches out the door and down Spring Street, but nobody standing in it seems to mind waiting. In chatty groups or as cuddly pairs or alone, people laugh and talk or read newspapers or thumb iPhone keypads in the shade of breeze-ruffled palmetto trees as they anticipate the treat ahead.

It’s Sticky Bun Sunday at WildFlour Pastry, a weekly tradition just three years old, like the bakery itself, but about as established as any upstart tradition can be in city as steeped in them as is historic old Charleston, South Carolina.

Sticky Buns arrive at one of WildFlour Pastry’s window tables

The line gradually moves forward each time someone emerges sporting a satisfied smile or toting a to-go box, disappearing on foot or by bicycle or in a car that has been idling nearby or circling the block.

Once inside the close quarters of this narrow storefront operation, I find a tiny seating area including a pair of tables wedged into twin alcoves with broad windows facing the street. There’s a somewhat roomier courtyard just out a side door with more tables tucked among garden greenery. Finally reaching the service counter at the front of the line, I trade $3 for a red plate bearing a fine specimen of Sticky Bun Sunday’s glorious signature pastry: a WildFlour Sticky Bun.

Courtyard dining at WildFlour Pastry

It’s a delightfully gooey (because it’s loaded with butter) sweet roll coated with cinnamon-sugar and topped with about as many pecans as can fit. It’s served warm and with an optional thick blob of creamy white icing on top.

Looking around as I eat, I spy a few neatniks approaching this delicacy with a fork and knife, performing a sort of culinary surgery and carving off small bites like they’re savoring fine steaks. Others, like me, just pick it up and let the sweet ooze drip, happy to lick sticky fingers later. I even see a few quick tongues tidying up sticky plates, messy chins be damned.

All Hail Pastry Chef Lauren Mitterer

Behind the counter leading her small team of fellow bakers (currently WildFlour has four employees) is owner and sticky-bun queen Lauren Mitterer.

The WildFlour crew, hard as work

A Chicago native and former Seattle-area resident, Lauren went to the University of Virginia on a rowing scholarship (earning a seat on the U.S. Rowing Junior National Team), took a degree in studio arts, and went on to develop her creative bent in the food world, graduating from the Culinary Institute of America in 2004. She has worked as a pasty chef at Tavern on the Green in New York City, Larkspur Restaurant in Vail, Colorado, and Red Drum Gastropub in Mount Pleasant across the Cooper River from Charleston. She’s been nominated twice for awards in the pastry chef category from the prestigious James Beard Foundation, once while working at Red Drum and once at her own WildFlour Pastry.

Lauren struck out on her own by opening WildFlour Pastry in September 2009, leasing a 700-square-foot space on the first floor of a petite two-story cottage in Charleston’s Cannonborough/Elliotborough area, a delightful old neighborhood tucked between the city’s bustling King Street commercial district, the Medical University of South Carolina, and The Citadel — The Military College of South Carolina.

Come on in, the pastry’s fine

She introduced Sticky Bun Sundays soon after opening, and at last count was making around 200 of the hefty sweet rolls for the occasion each week, frequently running out of them before the 8 a.m. to 1 p.m. serving hours end. (Hint: go early!)

The walk-in retail side took off quickly enough, but to bolster the operation Lauren also set up a catering business, creating wedding cakes and setting up dessert bars at special events. Through WildFlour Pastry she also supplies baked good to such noteworthy Charleston restaurants as The Macintosh nearby on King Street, Next Door in Mount Pleasant, and her former employer Red Drum, also in Mount Pleasant.

But Wait, There’s More

Like most of the Sunday morning crowd, I was at WildFlour for the always-satisfying Stick Buns. But many other choices crowd the showcases. Such as:

Double Chocolate Brownies at WildFlour Pastry

• Apples caramelized in brown butter and spiced sugar, nestled into phyllo pouches, baked, garnished with caramel sauce, and topped with aged cheddar

• Double chocolate cookies made with cocoa powder and dark bittersweet chocolate

• Double chocolate brownies, likewise combining cocoa power and dark chocolate and cut into large squares

• Scones, both sweet and savory varieties, in a constantly changing lineup that recently including strawberry jam, blueberry lemon curd, ham and cheddar, pesto and mozzarella, goat cheese and roasted red pepper

• Plus a host of biscuits, cookies, cupcakes, custards, turnovers, tarts, cakes, sweet breads, croissants, and more

Last Word

A glimpse into the WildFlour sense of humor

What does Lauren love most about running her bakery? “Everything!” she says. “It’s been such a challenging and rewarding endeavor. The people I encounter on a daily basis are probably what I appreciate the most, and also the freedom to create menu items and just play around with pastry ideas at my leisure.”

Sticky Bun Sundays

Don’t miss Sticky Bun Sundays from 8 a.m. to 1 p.m. every week at WildFlour Pastry. Bring friends to hang with or something to read in case the wait gets long, but don’t let the prospect of a delay deter you from a popular, worthwhile, tasty experience.

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WildFlour Pastry

73 Spring Street

Charleston, SC 29403

843-327-2621

www.wildflourpastrycharleston.com

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RECIPE Cherry Crisp from Levering Orchard in Ararat, Virginia

It’s a fact: Baking with cherries you picked yourself makes them taste better. Harvest some at this western Virginia orchard, and you’ll understand.

story & photos by Bakery Boy

Click here to see a separate post about Cherry Picking Time at Levering Orchard

Click here to see a separate post with a recipe for Cherry Pie from Levering Orchard

Cherry Crisp

This recipe for Cherry Crisp went over very well at my house. My family quickly finished off the initial batch and clamored for more. I’d brought back plenty of cherries from my visit to the you-pick operation at Levering Orchard in Ararat, Virginia—more than we were likely to eat as raw snacks before they began to rot—so I gladly started in making a double batch. The second time around I had enough to satisfy the home front and share some with a neighbor.

RECIPE Cherry Pie from Levering Orchard in Ararat, Virginia

With delicious cherries in season, I head to Levering Orchard in western Virginia for pick-your-own fruit, a lovely outing in a beautiful setting, and cherry recipes to bake when I get home.

story & photos by Bakery Boy

Click here to see a separate post about Cherry Picking Time at Levering Orchard

Click here to see a separate post with a recipe for Cherry Crisp from Levering Orchard

A day before I made this pie, the tart cherries I picked for it were still hanging on trees.

I picked the cherries that went into the pie I’m eating as I write this. There’s a sense of accomplishment—and a certain smug pleasure—in this fact. Besides reveling in buckets full of fresh cherries to snack on raw and to bake into various treats, I also have fresh memories of spending a lovely day in a century-old orchard perched on a verdant slope of the Blue Ridge Mountains just off the road-trip-worthy Blue Ridge Parkway.

Ready for picking

At Levering Orchard in western Virginia, the southernmost cherry orchard in the eastern United States, people can drive up, borrow plastic pales, climb wooden ladders already placed in ripe locations, and harvest as much fruit as they want (paying $2.49 per pound as they leave). Red and purple fingers belie the effort, and red and purple tongues offer evidence that sampling while picking is not only common but also encouraged.

A sweet slice of homemade cherry pie, loaded with fruit as well as memories of a fine day of cherry picking.

VG’s Bakery, Farragut, TN

 

Thumbprint Cookies. Photo by Andrew Hock.

Everything made from scratch and no compromising on quality are the twin mantras practiced at this excellent bakery west of Knoxville.

by Bakery Boy

“Fresh ingredients are the key to baking from scratch,” says David Gwin. Photo by Bakery Boy.

Just  when you think you know thumbprint cookies, along comes VG’s Bakery to change your whole perspective on the matter. “We make ours four inches in diameter and thicker than most, then load them with icing,” says co-owner David Gwin. “Nobody has a thumb that big, but we call them Thumbprints anyway.” They sell for $1.25 each or $12 for a baker’s dozen. Yes, even as giant as they are and with a discount for buying in volume, VG’s throws in an extra cookie to sweeten the deal. How nice is that?

 

REASONS TO LIKE That’s just one of many reasons to like this bakeshop in suburban Farragut, Tennessee, just west of Knoxville. Others include:

Scones

• Big, soft, moist Lemon Blueberry Scones or Apricot Pecan Scones

• Cream Cheese Sweet Rolls almost the size of a pie pans

• Pies bigger than pie pans because crusts and whipped cream overflow the rims on Key Lime, Chocolate Cream, and Coconut Cream versions

Chocolate Cake

• Layer cakes ranging from Red Velvet to Caramel, Carrot, egg-and-dairy-free Chocolate Fudge, and more

• A series of cookies on the scale of the impressive Thumbprints, including Lemon Iced, Double Chocolate, Oatmeal Raisin, Chewy Ginger, and Peanut Butter

Multigrain Bread

• Pan breads including great-for-toasting English Muffin, hot-on-the-tongue Cheddar Jalapeño Cornbread, and whole-wheat cracked-wheat Multigrain with lots of seeds

• Muffins that rise from baking tins and crack open like blooming flowers full of blueberries or cinnamon or (in those dubbed Morning Glories) with carrots, raisins, cranberry-raisins, walnuts, coconut, and pineapple

Macaroons

• Almond Macaroons, Coconut Macaroons, Chocolate Raspberry Oat Bars, and miscellaneous other goodies that fill showcases depending on the baking staff’s creative mood on any given day

• Because they’re always experimenting with new baked goods, each visit hold the promise of a few pleasant surprises

 

Katie Gwin (left) and her mother Vanessa Gwin. Photo by Bakery Boy.

THE V.G. IN VG’S Vanessa Gwin—a graduate of the Culinary Institute of America, a former sous chef, the daughter of a baker, head baker at VG’s (named for her initials), and co-owner along with her Knoxville-native husband David—makes everything from scratch. “That’s something Vanessa insisted on from the beginning, that we’d take no shortcuts and never compromise on quality,” says David, a former consumer-electronics engineer and tool-and-dye salesman who helped her launch VG’s Bakery in 1999. “It all has to be fresh-made from the best ingredients we can find.”

 

Katie with more Thumbprints. Photo by Bakery Boy.

A FAMILY AFFAIR Daughter Katie Gwin has worked with her parents in the bakery since her early teenage years. Now she has a journalism degree from the University of Tennessee and is working toward another degree while still helping at the shop. Son Riley Gwin, a high school senior, is currently “a skateboarding fiend, so we don’t see much of him around the bakery,” David says with a laugh, adding, “but there’s hope!”

FARMERS MARKETS The Gwins set up shop at as many as eight farmers markets each week during the spring-to-fall growing season. “We take some of everything we bake to each one, except for desserts that would melt outside in the heat,” David says. “Cookies and sticky buns sell best because they look good and smell good and can be eaten right out of hand. People also buy a lot of bread to take home to eat along with the produce they get.”

Sticky Buns

David serves as secretary-treasurer of the East Tennessee Farmers Association for Retail Marketing (F.A.R.M.). “That might seem surprising, a baker leading a farm organization,” he says. “But when you think about it, we use a lot of flour, and flour is near the end of a food system that starts with those who plow fields and grow wheat. The same is true for most ingredients.” Markets they stock include:

Multigrain Loaves

• Knoxville Farmers Market, Laurel Church of Christ, Knoxville, Tuesdays & Fridays

• Market Square Farmers’ Market, Market Square, Knoxville, Wednesdays & Saturdays

• New Harvest Park Farmers Market, New Harvest Park, Knoxville, Thursdays

• Dixie Lee Farmers Market, Renaissance Shopping Plaza, Farragut, Saturdays

• Oak Ridge Farmers Market, Jackson Square, Oak Ridge, Saturdays

 

A salvaged jewelry case adds a special touch. Photo by Bakery Boy.

ABOUT THAT SHOWCASE One long wood-and-glass showcase adds an interesting element to VG’s Bakery. “It’s an awesome antique jewelry case we got for free from a coffeehouse we supplied baked good to that didn’t need it anymore,” David says. “We paid $100 to have it moved and then fixed it up to hold cookies and pastries. Makes a nice touch, don’t you think?”

ALL WORTHWHILE “We’ve been here just long enough that little kids who came in holding their mama’s hands are teenagers now and can drive here on their own,” David says. “They have fond memories of VG’s and get the same treats as always. It’s the kind of thing that makes all the hard work worthwhile.”

LOCATION VG’s Bakery, 11552 Kingston Pike, Farragut, TN 37934. Just west of Knoxville take I-40/75 Exit 373, go south on Campbell Station Road, then west on Kingston Pike to a shopping center on the left anchored by Kohl’s department store. VG’s is squeezed between an H&R Block tax preparation service and a Bahia Tans tanning salon.

HOURS Monday-Friday 10 a.m.-6 p.m., Saturday 8 a.m.-3 p.m.

INFO www.vgsbakery.com or 865-671-8077

[Special thanks to photographer Andrew Hock of www.visualdelicious.com for his close-up images of baked goods.]