Smithfield bakery turns out biscuits, breads and lots of memories

SMITHFIELD

Baking requires exact measurements of flour and other ingredients, but the finished product is something harder to quantify.

Carolyn Burke remembers a man who drove up from Raleigh, N.C., to buy her silver-dollar biscuits for his mother-in-law, who was dying of cancer. She had remembered the sweet flaky biscuits and wanted to enjoy them one more time.

"When he told me the story, I all but cried all over the man," Burke recalls. "The biscuits are so important to people, not because of the biscuit but because of the memories."

Rows of silver-dollar and butter biscuits, all neatly bagged, are stacked up inside Burke's shop, the Smithfield Gourmet Bakery & Café on Main Street. Beneath the front counter are trays of muffins labeled with names like "cinnamon bun" and "chocolate chip," and behind the checkout area sit shelves of sour dough, honey-wheat, tomato-basil, seven-grain and honey-almond breads. In the adjacent dining area a tall refrigerated case holds pecan and pumpkin pies, cheesecakes, eclairs, custard bread pudding and cakes — Boston creme cake, Black Forest cake, carrot cake and German chocolate cake.

Burke opened the bakery and café in 1992, and though she says she couldn't survive without the business the café brings in, she calls baking "a passion that transcends everything else.

"Baking is therapeutic," she adds. "There's something calming about making biscuits, about making something with your hands and watching it rise.

"It's the bread of life. It's important."

Burke says she "used to do it 24 hours a day," but at age 56, she relies on a team of bakers who work with her in the kitchen. Sam Tran, who has been working with her for four years, turns out the biscuits, while Abby Street and Chelsea Minick create the muffins, pies and cakes that are popular sellers. Burke does the cheesecakes and other specialty items.

Growing up in the mountains of southwest Virginia, Burke began baking at age 10.

"My grandmother and mother both cooked," she recalls, "And I got married when I was 17 and my mother-in-law was a big help in it. She was like a second mother to me."

She came to Hampton Roads when her husband, Donald, a construction worker, was hired to work on the I-664 interchange. They settled in Smithfield where they also raise quarter horses.

In addition to owning the café and bakery and the coffee shop next door, Burke over the years has provided baked goods for local Starbucks outlets and large retail stores such as BJs. She also bought Crum's Bakery in Newport News in 1999 and ran it for three years before moving the operation to Isle of Wight as the Benn's Church Deli & Bakery until the property was sold.

Most of her recipes are her own, except for the prized biscuit recipe that comes from the Crum family. Biscuits start with the dough being mixed in a 50-gallon bowl. Then they are rolled out into a thin sheet, buttered and cut, allowed to rise and baked.

At this time of year, Burke and her crew sometimes start work at 4 p.m. and don't finish until midnight to turn out products for the holidays. Beginning in October, the bakery also makes pumpkin crunch — a layer of cookie cake crust topped with a light pumpkin filling and sweetened whipped cream — that flies out of the store. On the day before Thanksgiving, boxes of breads, biscuits and cakes are lined up to be picked up by customers.

Baked goods don't stay on the shelves for long. In addition to take-out customers, the cafe serves breakfast and lunch seven days a week and dinner on Friday and Saturday nights. It's a gathering place for early-bird coffee drinkers, members of a Saturday morning antique car club, and local artists whose works are displayed on the walls.

"Our customers are like guests in our home and we want it to be perfect for them," says Burke. "It's not something we do to make money. There's something about delighting people with food."

For those who say they can't make biscuits, Burke recommends this simple recipe:

Christmas Morning Biscuits

2 cups self-rising flour

1 1/2 cups heavy whipping cream (40 percent fat content or higher)

Gently mix together the flour and whipping cream. Do not overmix. Roll out dough to a thickness of about 3/4 of an inch. Cut biscuits out with a biscuit cutter. Place a pat of butter on top of each biscuit. Bake in a 350 degree oven for about 20 minutes. Cool and serve.

Want to go?

Smithfield Gourmet Bakery & Café

218 Main St., Smithfield. 757-357-0045. http://www.smithfieldgourmetbakery.com.

Hours: 7 a.m. to 5 p.m. Monday-Thursday, 7 a.m. to 8 p.m. Friday-Saturday and 8 a.m. to 5 p.m. Sunday.

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