Ari Barter, owner of Walpole Wildflours, stands behind her cooling baked goods in her home kitchen in Walpole on Friday, Sept. 20. Barter learned how to bake when one of her children developed a food sensitivity. (Johnathan Riley photo)
A mother’s love for her children has given birth to a bakery in Walpole, and recently a bread pickup box in Damariscotta.
Ari Barter’s endeavor to cater to her children’s food sensitivities has expanded into a business, Walpole Wildflours, when she started supplying her baked goods to local storefronts earlier this year and established an honor system pickup box at 74 School St. in Damariscotta on Sept. 10.
“I never grew up baking, I never even grew up making homemade meals, and then I had four kids,” she said, laughing. “It’s fun, it’s something I can do from home while I’m with my kids.”
The approach to food evolved for Barter when one of her two-year-olds developed food sensitivity and pulled Barter “down the rabbit hole of what’s in our food and our diet.”
“Our goal was to home make, home grow, buy local as much as we possibly can, which brought me down the sourdough rabbit hole,” Barter said.
Just over a year ago, Barter began watching online videos in an effort teach herself how to bake. Barter said she started baking sourdough loaves for the family, and soon, friends.
“My dough used to make two out of every batch, so I’d make one for us and then one for our friends. Then by February, everyone was wanting it and asking for it and I was like maybe I’ll get a little bigger,” she said.
In March, Barter spoke with High Hopes Farm co-owner Meaghan Nichols about stocking bread at their farm stand at 777 Bristol Road in Bristol. Later on, Barter started making bread for other local storefronts, such as Kneaded Provisions Island Grocery on Rutherford Island and Simply Sweet, an ice cream stand in South Bristol.
Barter bakes a variety of products, including sourdough loaves, focaccia, and bagels. The time for making each ranges from 36 hours for loaves to 14 hours for bagels to allow the fermentation process to occur. Each loaf contains water, flour and a small portion of sourdough starter.
A starter, according to Barter, is a living culture of yeast used to make the bread rise and add the characteristic sour taste. Barter said the starter needs to be fed water and flour every day, and taking care of it is like having another child. She named her starter Peaches, after the joint golf team she and her sister are on.
Maintaining a sourdough starter is an essential part of Barter’s baking and fermentation process of the dough. She said making good bread is pretty simple but requires a lot of trial and error.
“It will ferment and get nice and bubbly, and then you use that with more flour and water and salt and that’s all there is to it,” she said.
During the summer, she bakes twice a week in her home kitchen, turning on the oven around 3:30 a.m. to get it ready.
Barter tries to stick to the basics when cooking for others and stocking shelves so that she has time to cook for her own family still. She said at home she makes pizza dough and English muffins.
The name Walpole Wildflours came naturally to Barter, who grew up in Walpole and attended South Bristol School and Lincoln Academy in Newcastle.
“It just came to me one day, I liked incorporating flowers and it kind of stuck,” she said.
The logo of the bakery is a watercolor illustration of a bouquet of wildflowers in a watering can. The floral arrangement, according to Barter, is the birth flowers of each of her four kids, herself, and her husband.
On Sept. 10, Barter opened an honor-system bread box in the front yard of her grandparents’ home at 74 School St. in Damariscotta to expand the access her customers have to her products.
The future holds many possibilities for Barter, such as a bigger oven to bake more, a bigger box on School Street for more bread, or even a foray into cinnamon rolls.
With the season winding down for Barter and many of the storefronts closing for the coming winter, Barter said the best way to purchase her products is to go to the bread box in Damariscotta or contact her directly via the Walpole Wildflours Facebook or Instagram pages.
Those interested in placing an order with Barter should do so before Tuesday of the week they want their baked goods. Barter said contacting her via the business’ social media platforms is the best way to reach her.
