Oct. 30, 2007 - Issue #628: Confessions of an Innocent Man
Informal education can point to new ways to make some bread
There was always that little voice in the back of my mind saying, “Pay more attention. You need an education to succeed in this world.” Funny thing, but that voice frequently manifested itself with the visual attributes of my parents.
Back then, education was something that an institute delivered, a designated teacher taught and a designated student absorbed (hopefully). Education was, I thought, just as the dictionary describes it: “the imparting and acquiring of knowledge through teaching and learning, especially at a school or similar institution”.
My view of education today is vastly different, thanks in part to a conversation I had with Nancy Rubuliak, owner of Tree Stone Bakery.
Good bread, really good bread, is not only something I consume on a daily basis, but something I typically take for granted. While it’s not as easy to find as simply driving to your local supermarket—there you find institutional, mass-produced bread—it is something that can be found at a number of bakeries across the city, and Tree Stone is one of my favourites. So what does it take for someone to open a bakery so that the rest of us can enjoy amazing bread without having to lift a finger? When I asked Nancy Rubuliak if baking bread and owning a bakery was something she had dreamed about, she simply laughed. For her, it was more like a slow evolution. “It wasn’t as if a light suddenly switched on, it was more like a dimmer switch, changing gradually. There was no ‘ah ha’ moment.”
Her early background contains much of what we consider “traditional education”—a diploma from Grant MacEwan’s Behavioral Social Sciences Program followed by a Bachelor of Social Work degree from the University of Calgary Extension.
With an education behind her, Nancy settled into a career with Alberta Social Services as a social worker. The light that shines in her eyes when she talks about Tree Stone fades somewhat when she reminisces about first working with the child protection branch and then moving to geriatrics. You can see it was emotionally draining for her.
Her much-needed breaks would occasionally find her in Europe, and that is where she found her inspiration. As she put it, “When we go outside of what we know, we learn.” Europe was new and exciting—she liked the European attitudes, their traditions and the way they lived their lives. She found their appreciation of good food refreshing, a welcome change from the institutional food that is common in Canada.
While she was enchanted with the European way of living, being a social worker was definitely taking its toll on her. She didn’t have a master plan, she simply began to explore other aspects of herself.
Browsing the shelves at Greenwoods’ one day, she picked up a book on baking bread and started experimenting. The physical and creative nature of the bread making process seemed to fill a need in her so she borrowed International Culinary Schools from the library and on a whim enrolled in two week-long courses at the National Baking Center in Minneapolis, Artisan Bread I and Artisan Bread II. She didn’t know whether she would like it or not, she simply “bit the apple and let the juices drip.”
As it turned out, Nancy was captivated by the bread-making process. “I was like a kid playing in a sandbox!” She recounted that she couldn’t wait to come home and start baking, and that’s exactly what she did. She baked loaf after loaf, thrilled with the whole creative process. Friends and family reaped the benefits of all that bread, but Rubuliak soon discovered she either needed to acquire more friends or bake less bread—she was making so much she couldn’t even give it all away. That’s how Tree Stone Bakery started—she needed to start selling her creations if she was going to continue to indulge her new found passion.
A quick evening course (three or four hours total) at the Women’s Enterprise Initiative on business plans essentially rounded out Nancy’s formal education on baking and bakeries. Walking into the course that night reassured her, since the room was full of other “normal” women and she felt that if they could open a business, she could too.
Although the course was just one night, Nancy described the process of creating a business plan as “essential.” She was “religious” about creating hers and thinks it was key to her success. Well, that and making the best bread she possibly could.
The rest, as they say, is history. Tree Stone was born nine years ago and has grown into an extremely successful venture. Now the education involved is learning by watching and doing. She’s passionate about visiting other bakeries when she travels. She samples breads, she reads articles, she watches and she learns. She comes back and then judges her own work. She has taken one more bread making course but is essentially “learning by doing.” Even if something doesn’t work out, “you’ll have learned something from it.”
Of course there have been struggles, but, she says, that’s part of learning. Walk into the bakery and look at the cozy little table and two chairs by the window—she put those chairs there to remind her of her grandmothers. One little glance at those chairs quickly puts things in perspective for her. “If they could do what they did, you can do this.”
Nancy is definitely proof that education doesn’t have to be of the institutional variety. Her “formal” training in bread making and business, time-wise at least, has been minimal but her informal education has been extensive and is continuously on-going.
Her philosophy, “You shouldn’t stop learning just because you grow up physically,” is one we should all embrace. It proves that we don’t need to be seated at a desk or enrolled in a school to learn. Life itself is an education so get all you can out of it. Oh, and have some fun in the process. Nancy certainly is. V
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