PUBLICATIONS Inside Illinois Vol. 24, No. 11, Dec. 2, 2004

On the job: Dan Erwin

By Sharita Forrest, Assistant Editor
217-244-1072; slforres@illinois.edu

If you hear talk about “Seedy Rosemary Gone A-rye,” be advised people are discussing a prize-winning rye bread, not an unsavory woman. Seedy Rosemary is the creation of Dan Erwin, a cook at Florida Avenue Residence Halls, who also runs his own bakery business – The Little Bakery at the Square – and sells his baked goods at the farmer’s market in Urbana. Erwin said he concocted the recipe – which contains rosemary, caraway seeds, dill seeds and dill weed – to compete in the Champaign County Fair two years ago and walked away with a blue ribbon. Erwin joined the university’s staff in 2001 as a cook’s helper.

Click photo to enlarge Photo by Clark Brooks Dan Erwin is a cook at Florida Avenue Residence Halls, who also runs his own bakery business.

Tell me about what you do every day.
I prepare food for the students. I work 11:30 a.m. to 8 p.m. There are a couple things you have to prep for the following day. Then around 2, we start setting up for dinner, which comes around 4:45. We have maybe 700 to 800 students for dinner. Each day, it’s a little bit different. Sometimes you’re on the grill, in the back doing pasta or cleaning chicken.

What’s the most challenging part?
The organization and the timing. There’s quite a bit of stuff that has to be done during the day.

I was a kitchen helper for three years, doing basically the same things: peeling onions and cleaning peppers, dealing with the cold foods. But being a cook there’s much more variety, and it is a challenge. You have to be organized. There’s a lot to be taken into account each day, especially on Thursday, when they have ‘soul night.’ We serve maybe 1,000 people that night.

How did your baking hobby evolve?
I like to work with my hands quite a bit. I was in the grocery store and looking at all the bulk flours and began thinking about combining them to make different things. I had several different bread books. The one that I learned the most from was ‘Beard on Bread.’ I was into making different kinds of wheat bread for a while, then I got interested in rye. Working with rye, it’s like you throw out everything you’ve learned about baking bread and start from scratch. I have a mill at home and mill my own rye.

How did you get started baking bread as a business?
My wife got me started going to the farmer’s market. For the first couple of years, I was selling a relatively small amount. Then one day I tried to make English muffin bread. I made this sticky batter, and I called it ‘ugly bread’ because it just looked funny. People bought it! The next week, people came back asking for the ‘ugly bread.’ It appealed to people because it didn’t have any fat, didn’t have any sweetener, and you could toast it really hot and it wouldn’t burn up like the bread at the grocery store.

How many different varieties of bread do you make?
I have five different kinds of rye bread: Seedy Rosemary, a pumpernickel or Russian black bread, red onion rye, Norwegian rugbrod and Swedish limpa. I also have English muffins, challah, Finnish twist (another white bread with cardamom in it), Tuscan olive bread, Rosemary wheat, country harvest, cinnamon rolls and something we call crispy critters. It’s kind of like an elephant ear that’s baked.

I probably sell over 100 packages a week and probably spend 60-70 hours a week baking it during the summer when I’m on layoff.

What captured your imagination about bread?
Oh, it’s fascinating. There are so many different things you can do with it: different kinds of fat, different kinds of sweetener, shapes, textures. What I really love is the atmosphere at the market: It’s an ambience.

I got an associate’s degree from Southern Illinois University in dental technology, but it didn’t work out because I had psychomotor epilepsy. In 1984, I had surgery to correct a blood vessel that was leaking and causing the seizures. When the surgery was almost done, apparently they hit a wire or something and it was as though I had a light stroke. I could just barely speak; I couldn’t think of words I was trying to say. I went to the speech center here at UI and they helped me tremendously.

I have a rather simple life. Although I do have pressure on me, it’s a different kind. It’s a delightful challenge. The head cook and the manager at FAR have been extremely helpful; I can’t say enough. It’s a very delightful atmosphere. From what I’ve seen from 2001 to now, this seems to be, in my instance anyway, about the ideal place to work.

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