Local baker traveled the country in search of his purpose
There is something special about homemade bread.
Breaking into warm bread feels like coming home. It’s safe and warm. One person who regularly tells people about the beauties of not only freshly baked bread, but the beauty of food in general is Nels Peterson, owner of Panhandle Artisan Bread Company.
Peterson was raised in Milwaukee, Wisconsin, until he was 18 years old, where he went to Saint Norbert College outside of Green Bay.
“What I loved about Milwaukee was the food,” Peterson said. “There’s just a lot of different food and there’s a lot of different groups, too, of people. It was fun.”
Yishan Chen | Argonaut
Nels Peterson sells fresh-baked bread Saturdays, at the Moscow Farmers Market. He owns Panhandle Artisan Bread Company and has been all over the country in search of the best bread.
After college, Peterson said he moved to Moscow because his parents had moved there earlier.
“It was kind of like one of those ‘I don’t know what to do now that I’m done with college,'” Peterson said.
He said his love for food quickly increased in size when he got a job cooking in Moscow. His interest in cooking led him to Missoula later. There, he went to graduate school while working in a bakery and said it was there when he fell in love with baking bread. The bread wasn’t made completely by hand, but it gave Peterson the knowledge and introduction of how the process starts.
“I remember on my first day, I walked home from that bakery at about 4 or 4:30 in the morning and the dawn was starting to crack,” Peterson said. “In my backpack there was a warm loaf of bread and I can feel it on my back. It was kind of like, ‘This feels good. I like this.'”
From there on, he was on an adventure with food.
Peterson said he decided that he wanted to work in fancier restaurants. He moved to Seattle to work in the different restaurants in the city.
Though he enjoyed it there, he said he soon moved to Vermont. This was where he had the opportunity to work at “The Red Hen Bakery” in Middlesex, Vermont.
Peterson said Vermont was a state that was focused on local food. He said he once had to prepare Thanksgiving dinner with the challenge of having all the food come from a 150-mile radius. Needless to say, it was a successful dinner. Peterson said he knew right then that food was something he loved and had a passion for.
After decades of not being sure what to do with his life, Peterson settled in Moscow and opened up his own bakery. About seven years ago, he started to sell his homemade bread at the Moscow Farmers Market. With the skills he took in when he was working in “The Red Hen Bakery,” Peterson said he uses as many local ingredients as he can.
With the help of his mother, Gloria, his brother, Erik, and four other employees, Peterson works hard to keep customers happy with this homemade bread.
Jessy Forsmo-Shadid can be reached at [email protected]