Every morning before rosy-fingered dawn tickles the community’s east-facing windows, a slew of tiny wheat berries are tossed into Maple Grove’s most recent (and likely only) stone mill to be ground into fine, velvety wheat flour. This flour will be mixed with water, salt, yeast, and honey, kneaded until it reaches perfect elasticity, and carefully formed into loaves to be proofed and baked. Lucky is the soul who wanders through the doors of Maple Grove’s Great Harvest Bread bakery around 10 a.m. when those hot loaves of honey-whole-wheat bread emerge from the oven. Customers who sink their teeth into warm slices of the stuff will attest that, contrary to the tired saying, sliced bread like this simply can’t be bested.
“We opened the bakery because we wanted to connect with the community,” says Toni Fluke, one of the bakery’s owners. “Plus the bakery’s mission statement fits who we are.”
Toni and her husband, Jeff, opened their Great Harvest bakery on Aug. 17, 2012. As Toni says, the mission statement of the franchise—“Be loose; have fun”—truly fits the identity of the bakery owners and of their 15 employees.
Each week—with the exception of Sunday, which is reserved for “loafin”— the bakery buzzes with activity. A flour-spattered production staff intently mixes, pounds, and punches dough for the100-percent whole-wheat products, which include nine-grain bread, Dakota bread, scones, and oatmeal-raisin cookies, to name just a few items. Laughter is constantly bubbling up from the kitchen, and Toni, who typically puts in 10- to 12-hour days at the shop, busies herself slicing bread for customers, refilling bins with warm rolls, and deftly sliding sheets of cookie dough into a hot oven’s maw. Later in the afternoon when her husband shows up to put in his hours, she’ll gasp in disbelief— she doesn’t know where the time went.
“It’s like Christmas every day,” Toni says. “I never imagined this positive response from the community. People have big smiles when they walk in.”
The community has taken to the new bakery like active dry yeast takes to lukewarm water. Maybe it’s because they can smell the owners’ obvious love for the neighborhood, sweet as a wedge of cinnamon-raisin bread. It’s a place, after all, that the couple has called home most of their lives.
“I grew up in Maple Grove,” Jeff says. “In the winter when I was younger, I used to go snowmobiling in the gravel pits.”
The legendary gravel pits are gone now, and in their place stretches a strip of local businesses, Great Harvest included. Jeff can stand outside his bakery and point to imaginary ditches where his wild Midwestern chariot used to rip through puffs of snow.
He’s happy that life has slowed down since those wintry joyrides during adolescence. It sped up for a while as Toni and he raised their two children. But since the kids spread their wings and left the nest, the husband and wife duo decided to put their energy into the bakery—an endeavor that was a leap of faith considering the fact that neither Jeff nor Toni had had previous professional experience in the food industry.
“Well, I had some experience,” Toni says. “I used to bake cookies and sweets for the kids and their friends all the time. They would call me ‘Mama Fluke.’”
Of course, passion and heart go a long way—and so does a little training. Toni, er, Mama Fluke, went through the necessary education to be able to sling dough with the best of them. And Jeff ties his apron on, too, stepping behind the counter to sample out a crust of this or a wedge of that.
“People love the breadboard that we have,” Jeff says. “We’re always giving out free tastes of bread. Our regulars will come in for a cup of coffee and something sweet, and we’ll chat about the kids’ soccer team. It’s a neighborhood-coffeehouse feel.”
As for those who aren’t aware of that cozy atmosphere, Toni lures them into the shop by posting tantalizing food photos on the bakery’s Facebook page. On Saturday mornings, she’s been known to snap pictures of the team’s gooey cinnamon rolls, and upload them to the site. When people see the post, they throw on bathrobes and shoes, and arrive at the bakery out of breath and ravenous for rolls.
Those patrons are greeted with happy smiles from the Flukes, who are eager to put fresh bread into the hands of whoever walks into their bustling new bakery.
@
13714 Grove Drive
763.416.1911
