Hartford Bakery Serves Our Daily Bread

JAY SORGI

SPECIAL TO THE CATHOLIC HERALD

It smells and tastes like sourdough loaves, sandwiches and cookies. It looks and sounds like God’s presence, in more than a subtle way.

Patrons who walk through Our Daily Bread, located at 758 Grand Ave. in Hartford, will not only take in the tasty waft of fresh sourdough bread made using starter from the 1800s on the Oregon Trail or get their pick-me-up from a Milwaukee-owned coffee roaster, they’ll discover the letters “IHS” above the inner door, pictures of St. John Paul II, free scapulars and products for sale that you might likely find at a Catholic bookstore, and possibly the sound of a bible study.

“I think the Lord gave us senses for a reason, and I don’t think it’s a mistake that he that he has us eat his body literally, because we’re human beings. We love things that smell good, taste good,” Our Daily Bread Co-Owner Helen Burleigh said of the blissful attack on customers’ senses.

“So when they walk in, people usually say, ‘It smells so good in here.’ We bake bread and cookies all day long.”

But for Burleigh, a mother of two young children, and her mother, Corinne Maier, who has 10 kids of her own, the bakery and restaurant has offered a sense of mission as well as a platform to make a living for their families.

“I think God just provides,” Burleigh said, “and I think that’s been the leap of faith.”

She said the restaurant spawned from the simple act of learning how to make sourdough bread. Burleigh explained it’s part of a way to return to a simpler life that many people are embracing.

“Both my mother and I found that in our daily life, making bread was really helpful to create more of an intentional lifestyle. You have to sit with the bread, you have to stretch it. You have to knead it,” she said.

“You have to be around your home, and you have to kind of set a schedule. It was such a blessing to us to have this new hobby, and when we shared it and it was well received, God sort of just set up a path for us to open a storefront.”

But she admits that juggling sourdough starter, sharing storefront conversations about God and parenting a three-month-old and a 2-year-old child was so challenging, it led to understandable doubts.

“Does God want us to do this? Because it seemed to me like it would throw everyone’s schedules off kilter. My 2-year-old wouldn’t have her mom all the time at home. My husband works as a teacher, and he also helps at the bakery, so he’s gone,” Burleigh said.

But she said that her experience building this business taught her to overcome the mental obstacles of “you can’t” as a parent.

“You will never do anything if all you say is, ‘Well, that won’t work, because I have a kid.’ I wanted to be a testimony to people who put off having children. You can do it. You can just do it,” Burleigh said.

“I wouldn’t have been able to see how lovely the Lord has wanted to provide for us, and he’s done that my whole life. He’s always provided. So opening the store wasn’t very hard.”

Burleigh and her mother have “done it” far beyond expectations. Often on Saturday, patrons will line up down the block just to pick up sourdough bread for the weekend. As they wait, they take in the faith-filled droplets among the décor, which the mother-daughter team created themselves “from the floor to the painting,” as Burleigh puts it.

All that spawns conversation about aspects of their Catholicism, and chances to inform, teach and evangelize.

“We get people who ask questions. They’ll ask, ‘What’s a scapular? What’s this book?’” Burleigh said.

“You’ll find people who aren’t even faithful, who want to buy them because they think it’s really cute, and it’s such a cool thing to see evangelization work through your store when you really don’t have to do much. We just gave God a space, and he’s doing all the work for us.”

Work such as setting the restaurant’s biggest tables for faith groups to meet on a random morning — not to play cards, but to study Scripture.

“Almost every day, there’s a group of ladies who come and get their Bibles out, and they stay for usually an hour and a half, and they study the Bible together,” said Burleigh.

“One of them came up to us once, and they’re like, ‘Do you have a Bible handy?’ We’re like, ‘You know what? No, you caught us.’ Now we have Bibles for people to just use at our store.”

The conversation further moves to the pictures and the Lord’s Prayer in Polish to go with that nation’s flag. That conversation turns curiosity into catechesis, and into the way the mother-daughter team conveys the Catholic faith to the community that has embraced them — all a reflection they are fulfilling their vocation, Burleigh said.

“I think I’ve received a lot of confirmation lately that I am where I’m supposed to be,” Burleigh said.

“We push people to think about their vocations a lot when they’re younger. You know, what’s your vocation? Are you going to be a priest? Are you going to be a sister? I discerned the sisterhood for a long time. And now that I’m married and I have my children, I have my husband, and I have this sort of mission that we’re all working on together.”

It’s a life Burleigh believes brings clear evidence of her calling.

“All I have to do is be willing to work, and it’s a great consolation, because that really means I can let God handle everything else, and I only have to show up. I don’t really even have to do it well. I just have to be willing,” she said.

“I have to say yes.”