Still going with the grain

It is 15 years now since James Barrett started baking his extraordinary European-style breads in Fishtown, an artisan baker, a fish out of water at the time, baking bread, for goodness' sake, in muslin-lined willow baskets. You could see the floury stripes on the finished loaves, snowy furrows on brown winter hills.

There have been up times and down times. Even times of wondering, along with co-owner Wendy Smith Born, whether their Metropolitan Bakery was eating them, instead of sort of the other way around: Could they stay this hands-on? Keep this level of intensity?

But a funny thing is happening on Marlborough Street, I-95 humming above, a lovingly tended memorial garden nearby. Here in the 10,000-square-foot bakery Metropolitan has operated for most of its life, business is on the bullish uptick even as the economy unravels.

Trade in the bakery's four retail stores is brisk. Wholesale orders (from dozens of markets and restaurants on the order of Lacroix, Rae, 10 Arts and Barclay Prime) remain strong; so far, at least: "People eat bread in times of crisis," Barrett says.

Well, they may carbo-load. But his bread? It's hardly bargain-priced (typically 20 percent higher than you'll pay in the supermarket), though supermarket breads, too, have inched up as the global demand for wheat flour rises.

No, price isn't a big problem, Barrett says, touring the dough troughs and shaping benches where still - daily! - he takes his turn, folding and punching down and rolling the moist whole-wheat sandwich breads and pointy sourdough ficelles and fish-shaped loaves full of flaxseed, oats and dried cranberry that can have the ancient aspect - gills slit on the side, brow sloping - of a berry-dotted sturgeon.

What was a big problem were the low-carb and Atkins diets, the South Beach diet, the misreading, at first, of the glycemic index. Bread and pastry and all baked goods took a mighty hit. But as sure as the seasons change, Barrett's Old-World baking - concentrating on two-day-long natural yeast fermentations, and liberal use of organic flours and house-toasted whole grains and seeds - found itself back in vogue, its millet and oats and flax, its rye flour and sprouted spelt associated again with wholesome eating. Bread you could believe in!

It is, in fact, wonder bread. The tall whole-wheat loaves are delicate and loose-crumbed, a joy out of the morning toaster. There are tighter, skinny loaves redolent of apricot and nut. And stolid bâtardes. In 1993, Wendy Born says, customers occasionally objected to the sturdy, crackling crusts; now they ask for the crustiest loaf on the shelf.

They want the whole grains, too, so much so (about 30 percent more) that Barrett has felt liberated to bake even a dense, heavy, all-grain German bread - volkornbrot, by name - of soaked spelt and cracked wheat that, almost certainly 15 years ago, would never have left the store. (Now whole-grain breads - far healthier since they don't convert as quickly to sugars and fat - rank as the second, third and fourth most popular items at the bakery, bested only by the top-selling French baguette.)

There is another thing, though, that Barrett thinks has stood the bakery well: its unwavering devotion to truly artisanal baking, to sourcing high-quality flours and fig paste (for his take on Fig Newtons), and, finally, just being there, being here for so long: "In times of stress," he says, "people come to us . . . for the familiar, for comfort, for friends; we care about them, and about how we make things."

So in troubled times, the slow food and good food and local food movements have boosted the bakery's fortunes.

Not that Metropolitan hasn't had to compromise: "When we opened in 1993, we were determined not to have a bread-slicer," says Born. "That lasted about a day."

1-877-412-7323 (for locations)

www.metropolitanbakery.com

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