Baking brothers expand old world traditions

  In a glass-walled room at Prager Brothers Artisan Bread in Carlsbad, customers lining up for loaves of sourdough and sunflower rye can see the bakery's newest technology at work - an old-fashioned stone mill that grinds flour in prehistoric fashion. The slow-moving mill, which crushes grains of whole wheat between two 250-pound granite discs, is just the latest way the bakery's co-founders - Carlsbad-raised brothers Louie and Clinton Prager - are taking the art of bread-baking back in time. Seven days a week, the siblings and their baking crew turn out hundreds of loaves of hand-formed, naturally leavened, organic whole-grain bread. Their Old World breads are made without yeast, sugar or commercial mixing machines. It takes about 36 hours to produce a loaf of Prager sourdough bread, compared with four hours at a commercial bakery. Louie, who holds a degree in plant biology, said the company's goal isn't just to make good bread. Its goal is to educate the public on the history and traditions of growing, milling, fermenting and baking breads with traditional techniques. "Our mission is to restore the craft of artisan breads," he said. "We want people to appreciate the time, care and work that goes into this." Since opening their first industrial bakery in 2013, the Prager brothers have been buying flour from organic mills, like Camas Country Mill in Oregon. That limited the varieties of grain they could buy, since most mills are large commercial operations that can't afford to slow down their production cycle to grind small-batch "heirloom" organic mixes for little independent bakeries like Prager Brothers. So, six months ago, the brothers ordered their own 26-inch electric-powered mill from North American Stone Mills in North Carolina. Only about a dozen independent bakeries in the U.S. have their own in-house mills. The $12,000 mill was custom-built and delivered three months ago, and ever since it's been churning out all sorts of organic flours, including California-grown Yecora Rojo red wheat, Tibetan purple barley and organic cornmeal. Louie delights in showing customers how the grains are fed into a hole between the rotating stones, pressed out the sides and swept down a steel chute. It takes about an hour to grind 50 pounds of whole grain into a light flour that's then hand-sifted to separate out the bitter bran (outer shell) of the crushed wheat kernels. The machine, which runs all morning and most afternoons, isn't producing enough yet to supply all of the bakery's needs. But Louie said it's been invaluable in helping him and his brother explore a variety of new red, white and half-size wheat grains. It's also helped them customize some flour blends and experiment with the size of the flour granules. Using a different type of flour, more water, hand-folded dough and a slow fermentation process results in a better flavor, a more open crumb (bigger air holes inside), a chewier, more multicolored crust and a longer shelf life. The brothers sell their breads, pastries and sandwiches from a retail shop that fronts the 3,300-square-foot bakery, which is visible through a wall-sized glass window. At any hour of the day, customers can watch the Pragers and their dozen-plus kitchen staff milling grain, kneading dough, hand-shaping pretzels, cookies and croissants, and moving trays of fresh-baked loaves into cooling racks. Though baking is now their shared life's work, the brothers came to it from different directions and at different times. Louie, 30, studied birds in the Peruvian rain forest before pursuing his bread-baking passion in 2011. Clinton, 29, is a classically trained guitarist who set aside his music career four years ago to help his brother as the business began to take off. Louie started out making pizzas in the first of several homemade wood-fired ovens in their family backyard when he was in high school. While studying biology at Cal Poly San Luis Obispo, he trained in artisan breadmaking at 3rd Corner Bakery in Los Angeles. Prager Brothers Artisan Bread Hours: 8 a.m. to 6 p.m. Mondays-Fridays. 8 a.m. to 5 p.m. Saturdays. 8 a.m. to 2 p.m. Sundays. Where: Carlsbad Gateway Center, 5611 Palmer Way, Suite C, Carlsbad Phone: 760.703.1904 Online: pragerbrothers.com Then, when he couldn't find work as a biologist after college, he decided to become a full-time baker. At first he sold loaves baked in a borrowed restaurant oven to friends and family. Then in 2012, he opened a booth at the Encinitas Farmers Market, and sales exploded. By that time, Clinton had earned a music degree from UC Santa Cruz and was working as a musician and teacher. But when Louie asked him to come into the business as a partner in 2013, he learned the craft by his brother's side. They arrive at their bakery every morning at 3 a.m. to get all their supermarket deliveries out before dawn. They rarely head home - Louie lives in Carlsbad, Clinton in Oceanside - before 9 p.m. Over the past two years, the business has more than doubled in size. Besides the onsite shop, their breads are now sold at six farmers markets from Escondido to Little Italy; natural foods markets including Cardiff's Seaside Market, Jimbo's and O.B. People's Market; and organic cafes like Baker & Olive. The Pragers make a dozen types of bread, including nine varieties of sourdough. The top-seller is the "miche" country loaf, a whole wheat sourdough, as well as a walnut whole-grain, olive rosemary, rye sunflower, sesame semolina, raisin walnut and whole-grain sprouted spelt. There are also yeast-risen baguettes, flatbreads and pretzels, and a variety of European-style pastries and cookies. In December 2015, the Pragers moved into a larger space in the Carlsbad Gateway Center, a 16-acre light industrial park on Palmer Way. Since 2013, the park has established a niche as a "makers" space for several food businesses that make and sell their products onsite. Besides Prager Brothers, there's Happy Pantry, a live-culture kitchen making fermented...