Oxford Bread Maker Works to Preserve a Dying Craft

Story Contributed by Jake Davis and Daeisha Gipson
IMC Students
gdaeisha@gmail.com; akeryan.davis98@gmail.com

Artisan bread maker Adam Griffith describes his baking as part art and part science.

For some, there’s nothing like a warm, crusty chunk of homemade bread to help make a meal. That’s why artisan bread makers like Oxford’s Adam Griffith are trying to preserve the old ways of baking bread before major chains stomp out the competition. 

“It’s an art form that is being lost,” Griffith said. “Large chains like Panera… they are making decent artisanal bread but they’re doing it in like a factory. They’re mass-producing it, they’re sending out raw dough to the different locations and then all they’re doing is baking it on-site so the number of people that actually understand the process… is very much diminishing.” 

Griffith is correct that wholesale bakers are trying to take advantage of America’s rediscovered interest in organic and artisanal bread. But the Charlotte, North Carolina native began baking bread the old-fashioned way in college and immediately developed a passion for it.

“I loved it. I enjoyed the work and did it off and on, part-time sometimes full-time for a few years.” 

Griffith studied for a year under a graduate of a nine-year French culinary program and says the experience gave him invaluable knowledge.

“I learned a lot just in that short time and brought that back. I only do it a little bit now but I like it and don’t want to give it up, so I just do it one day a week,” he said. 

Griffith now works at Bottletree Bakery and is the head baker at Delta Gamma sorority on the University of Mississippi campus, and he is trying to pass his expertise on to the next generation of bread makers.

“A lot of people cannot do it. There’s been a lot of people that I’ve trained over the years that do it and I train them and then a couple of months into it they decide they can’t do it anymore because it’s grueling hours, you know…it’s a graveyard shift.”

“There’s only a small number of people, at least in this country, that are learning how to do it by hand from beginning to end,” he said. “It’s unfortunate because it’s becoming very popular. Fewer people know how to do it and it’s more and more going to become something that’s sourced to large, corporate, factory-style operations.”

Griffith hopes more young people will take to the craft he has dedicated so much time and effort to before it is forgotten forever.