Columbus Micro-Bakery Art House Works Sourdough Into Everything It Bakes

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Franklin County

Most bakers keep their sourdough starter for bread. Susan Miller keeps hers busy everywhere. At Art House Bakery, her Columbus micro-bakery, the same culture goes into dinner rolls, cinnamon rolls, muffins, scones, brownies and cookies, and everything is baked to order.

Miller came to baking the long way. She spent years as a home baker before training in Baking and Pastry Arts and working in Columbus bakeries. She started Art House to make tasty items that remind you of home, simple snacks made with wholesome ingredients. The bakery sells through a pop-up that pairs the baking with a monthly art show, and the outdoor sculptures on site are, in her words, an added bonus.

In a sweet bake, she says, the culture does quiet work. It adds a subtle taste nuance, it helps with the leavening, and it extends the baked goods’ shelf life.

Ordering runs on a weekly rhythm. Orders confirmed by 4 p.m. on Thursday are ready for pickup on Saturday between 7 a.m. and noon, and Miller can accommodate pickup on other days of the week as well. As a micro-bakery, she can only take a certain number of orders for any one day. Each order needs time to confirm the order and any allergies or special requests, ingredients to purchase, the sourdough activated overnight, then the baking, cooling and packing.

That calendar fills fast around the holidays. Art House is already booked for the week of Thanksgiving, Wednesday through Sunday, and Miller says now is the time to be thinking about December holiday plans.

For Thanksgiving itself, she will not argue that sourdough rolls are the star of a meal steeped in family tradition. Her suggestion is some sourdough pumpkin and pecan scones or a tender sourdough coffeecake, saved for breakfast on the day after Thanksgiving as a welcome treat. Her advice to nervous home bakers is to take the bread off their plate. The stressful part of big holiday cooking, she says, is the coordination and timing of getting everything ready and held hot, and bread and rolls that are parbaked and need only 5 minutes in the oven right before they go on the table take that stress down a notch.

Art House also sells cutting boards made from lumber grown and milled in Clintonville. The clean lines of the boards let the rich grain of the walnut or cherry wood shine, and the boards are made for serving breads, cheeses and fruits. Carving meat and poultry, as Miller learned in her culinary classes, should only be done on NSF certified materials to maintain food safety.

Thank you to Susan Miller of Art House Bakery for her contribution to this story.

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