CHICAGO — Of the five nominees announced earlier this year, ZU Bakery from Portland, ME, was honored as the winner of the Outstanding Bakery category at the James Beard Restaurant and Chef Awards, held June 10 in Chicago.
Barak Olins, founder and head baker of ZU Bakery, accepted the award. During his acceptance speech, he thanked his loved ones for their support in the bakery’s long journey.
“Thank you to my beautiful wife who is here with me tonight and who has supported me through the many changes and challenges of this bakery over the last twenty years,” Barak said. “She inherited a baker’s schedule without choosing to be a baker.”
He also recognized his bakery crew, supporters, customers and local businesses. Barak closed out his acceptance speech with a quote from James Beard’s book, Beard on Bread.
“Lastly, thank you to James Beard for writing Beard on Bread, which was the first real bread book that I read,” Barak shared. “He ended the introduction with this: ‘It is a mysterious business, this making of bread, and once you are hooked on the miracle of yeast, you will be a bread baker for life.’”
In a post-awards interview with the James Beard Foundation, Barak reflected on what winning Outstanding Bakery symbolized for someone who’s been in the industry for decades.
“When you start a business, whether it’s at farmers markets, which is where I started as a baker, or opening this brick-and-mortar space, you go through, do the renovation, do all the work, and then you open the door, you put the flag out, you flip the sign over and you have no idea what’s going to happen,” Barak reflected. “And when nobody comes, the blood falls from your head, and you panic, and you feel the sense of questioning everything. This is the complete opposite. This immense recognition for, in my case, 25 years of baking and another five years of cooking before owning a restaurant, so that life of being in food, I feel so grateful, so affirmed and proud.”
The Maine French cuisine bakery is best known for its scones and paves, with its wood-burning oven serving as the core of ZU’s operations.
This is the second bakery to receive this recognition, following inaugural winner Yoli Tortilleria from Kansas City, MO.
