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Adam Shimer hauled his clothes dryer out of the laundry room to install a second oven. He and his wife Yahaira had agreed to sell sourdough at BAMfest, their first event, but their kitchen only produced two loaves an hour. “We ended up baking for 24 hours straight,” he recalls. They sold out.

The couple behind Crust N’ Crumb moved to Bradenton five years ago after Adam's 25 years in restaurant kitchens. By day, he serves as executive chef at Ringling College of Art and Design. Yahaira keeps the starter alive and mixes dough; Adam shapes the loaves after dinner.

The starter dates to the hurricanes two years back. “I started posting pictures of our horrible sourdough,” he says. A nextdoor neighbor asked whether they sold their bread, so that January they did. Ten loaves one Saturday, then twenty the week after, all out of two Dutch ovens. “No way, I can’t do this much,” Adam remembers thinking. “I thought we’d just be doing this to make a car payment every month.” Last season they baked more than 6,000.

Crust N’ Crumb attracts a line of devotees, a.k.a. “Bread Heads,” at the Bradenton Public Market every Saturday. The traditional loaf sits alongside jalapeño and cheddar, roasted garlic and rosemary and other inventive flavors, each with a crackling crust and open crumb. Sourdough bagels, scones, muffins and cookies complete the offerings.

Early profits went into a new state-licensed trailer, where Adam brings his culinary chops to the menu: toasted bagels with house schmears, breakfast sandwiches and, for cold mornings, chowder in a sourdough bread bowl. The trailer will make a twice-monthly stop at Mixon Fruit Farms market.

Adam can’t predict the rest. “I might have a brick-and-mortar one day. I don’t want one, but if you asked me a year ago, do I want a food truck? I would have said no.”

CrustN'Crumb, Bradenton Public Market, 400 Old Main St., Saturdays 9 a.m.–2 p.m. 847-651-5989, crustn.crumb.fl@gmail.com

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