On-Campus Bakery Will Bring Food into the Classroom

Ella Kirk has been a French professor at Hiram for 18 years, but she’s always dreamed of running a bakery.

With the opening of the Terrier Bakery this fall, she’ll get to do both.

Kirk will be teaching a Freshman Colloquium course called “The Art of Making Dough.” It will contain a mix of practical and classroom work; students will read texts like “Six Thousand Years of Making Bread: Its Holy and Unholy History” by H.E. Jacob, and they will also help run the Terrier Bakery.

Kirk initially presented her vision at ideabuild!, a competition that allows faculty and students to present entrepreneurial ideas to a panel of judges, last spring.

“I wanted to take the baking idea and bring it to the classroom,” she said. “Colloquium was a good venue for that.”

The Terrier Bakery is designed to be the first Student Run Venture in conjunction with the Center for Integrated Entrepreneurship. The Center’s vision for Student Run Ventures is that they will be college-owned, faculty-championed, curriculum-connected and student-run.

Currently, Kirk is running the bakery by herself, through pre-orders only, in the kitchen of East Hall. Come fall, she is hoping the Terrier Bakery will have a kiosk set up in the Kennedy Center, where students can buy from the menu of breads and desserts, on certain days of the week.

She said she expects every student in the class will spend some time baking, but students who take a special interest in other aspects of the bakery – accounting or advertising, for example – will have the opportunity to focus on that. She wants it to be an interdisciplinary experience for the students.

Because she’ll be teaching freshmen, Kirk isn’t expecting students to come in with extensive baking knowledge. But she’s introduced cooking to some of her French courses before, and said students tend to be very interested – all it takes is the introduction.

“I’ve found out that they’re very eager to learn, and they learn very quickly,” she said.

The food sold at the Terrier Bakery is largely inspired by the French culture, which favors natural ingredients over preservatives. In exposing students to that idea, Kirk said she hopes they’ll gain an appreciation of the slow foods movement, in addition to learning the trades of the kitchen.

“I’m looking forward to seeing students get really excited about good food, and being able to go into the supermarket and say what (is or isn’t) good enough,” she said. “I think there’s a real movement toward better produced stuff in the United States.”

Faculty, staff and others on campus this summer can place orders via this online form at least 24 hours in advance of when you’d like your item. If you have troubles accessing the form, please e-mail kirkew@hiram.edu with the order. The Terrier Bakery is closed on weekends. Kirk said she expects the bakery to be running in full by September 12, the third week of the fall semester.