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Trevor Huggins serves up some wonderful pizzas at the Birch Grove Community Center on most Wednesday nights through the summer. Photo courtesy of Rob Perez
West End Pizza Nite is back at Birch Grove Community Center. Most Wednesdays, 5-7 p.m., from June 3-September 15. Red sauce and mozzarella are provided, but the event is considered BYOT (Bring Your own Toppings) with a suggested donation of $5. This family-friendly event has been absent since the start of the pandemic but it’s back in all its glory.
The Birch Grove pizza oven did not fire up in 2020. The problem wasn’t social distancing. (The pizza oven is, of course, outdoors.) The problem was getting the right flour. When the Canadian border shut down on March 21, 2020, to all but essential traffic, Pizza Nite shut down right along with it.
It turns out, Trevor Huggins, the pizzaiolo at Birch Grove, gets his flour from north of the border. He’s been making pies at Birch Grove since 2014. “I’m a bit of a snob about where the flour comes from,” admits Huggins. Local, renewable, and healthy are all part of the mission.
Huggins’ interest in baking started from a young age. “When I was growing up, my mother used to bake pies from scratch for the Bluefin Bay.” Huggins found himself studying breadmaking, even dreaming about sourdough and one day, in 2018, decided to follow his passion and start his company. Originally called Good Hearth Breads, Huggins changed business names when Covid- 19 pushed his business online. He wanted to bring a more ecological focus to his product and the pandemic provided an opportunity for just that.
Huggins brings an old-world playbook to Watershed Breads, a cottage food provider that prides itself on a bread that is naturally leavened in a long fermentation. “A piece of true sourdough bread taken with the meal lowers the glycemic load by 25 percent.” According to longevity expert and Blue Zones founder Dan Buettner. “In other words, if you’re eating sourdough bread with your meal your body absorbs the sugars more slowly, making it more likely they will add up to energy instead of extra pounds.”
You can find Watershed Breads offerings here: watershedbreads.square.site/
There are three kinds of sourdough and a rye, but far and away the most popular bread is the hearty Boundary Waters Breakfast Bread, made with eggs, wild rice, and chia seed. “I wanted to bake something that you could wake up and go with, hearty and sweet, yet substantial enough so you wouldn’t be hungry by 10 o’clock,” says Huggins.
All Watershed Breads are baked in the Birch Grove pizza oven so West Enders can pick them up at Birch Grove on Wednesday and East Enders can pick them up on Thursday in the parking lot at the community center.
But why grab and go when you can grab and stay? “When the kids are playing on the playground and the adults are standing around talking, it reminds me of growing up on the West End,” Huggins recalls. After a long hiatus, Pizza Nite is a perfect place to reconnect with friends and neighbors – and to let someone else do the baking. It’s not required but if you RSVP to goodhearthbreads@gmail.com, you can guarantee Trevor will have as many pies as your heart desires.
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