By Sarah Stebbins
From our July 2024 issue
For 22 years, Barak Olins ran Zu Bakery out of a South Freeport barn equipped with a wood-fired oven, toiling into the wee hours on Friday night to prepare for the Brunswick Farmers’ Market on Saturday morning. After he and his family moved from South Freeport to Portland, in 2012, Olins slept on a cot in the barn on Friday nights. At the market, “I saw these vendors who were older than me slowing down, and I was scared,” Olins says. So, in 2022, he opened a small Portland shop that operates on a schedule that doesn’t necessitate nocturnal baking. Instead, the staff bakes throughout the day, offering pastries at 9 a.m., various breads between 9:30 a.m. and 12:30 p.m., and pizzas and focaccia starting at 1 p.m. “For the most part, people have embraced the schedule,” Olins says. “And even said, ‘I appreciate that you don’t want to come in at 3 a.m.’”
A Tennessee native, Olins honed his bread-making skills in the 1990s at Portland’s former Cafe Uffa, which he co-owned with friends. After it closed, he launched Zu, specializing in rustic loaves made with flour he mills himself to ensure its freshness. “I genuinely believe the best bread has already been made,” Olins says. “I’m just aspiring to continue that tradition.” So he was genuinely surprised in March, when Zu was named a finalist in the Outstanding Bakery category in the James Beard Awards, a top honor in the food industry. Then, in June, he found out he had won. This summer, he’ll be riding the wave of James Beard acclaim, and he’ll be riding the waves at his favorite hangout, Scarborough Beach State Park, where he recently started bodysurfing.