Outside the cracker box

15.12.2007 22:06 Home - Source: JS Online

Madison - It was only a matter of time before someone realized the cheese state needed fresh, local crackers to pair with its acclaimed artisanal cheeses.

Nancy Potter was that someone. And she found the perfect partner in her son Peter, a cheese aficionado with a food science degree.

Potter's Fine Foods is in peak holiday production, rolling out seasonal specialties such as cranberry-wild rice crackers that pair perfectly with Wisconsin Gruyere, and caraway-rye crackers that bring out the best in blue cheese, smoked fish or the classic Milwaukee New Year's Eve spread, herring in wine sauce.

In its first 17 months of production, the company has developed a loyal cracker following both here and in Milwaukee.

There is no Potter's Crackers retail store. They're sold directly to specialty food stores and natural food co-ops. The little cracker kitchen that aims to be uniquely Wisconsin is located in a nonprofit small-business incubator complex less than a mile from the Capitol Square.

On any given weekday, the aroma wafting through the building may be fresh onions or garlic from West Star Farm near Cottage Grove, fresh rosemary from Sprouting Acres near Cambridge or any of a number of other locally-grown organic ingredients baked into crisp, rectangular crackers.

"I've always had a fascination with crackers, and I didn't think there was anything special out there before we started making them," said Nancy Potter, who owned the New Glarus Bakery for more than 25 years before selling it in 2001. "When I sold the bakery, I made an off-handed comment to my son Peter, who's very much a cheese person, that if I ever went into business again I'd like to make crackers."

Getting into the business

Peter Potter, who earned his bachelor's degree in food science from the University of Wisconsin-Madison and is pursuing graduate studies in systems engineering, picked up his mother's idea and ran with it. They became business partners in July 2006 and now employ 10 high school and college-age neighborhood residents to help make their crackers.

"People think of crackers as a hobby, not a business," said Nancy Potter. "But this from day one has been a business. I don't consider good crackers a fad. It's like coffee. Our expectations for good coffee have changed dramatically. Crackers are a very viable business."

Peter Potter, 24, is the face of the company, buying many of the ingredients from local organic farmers and handling direct cracker sales, delivery and marketing. Nancy Potter puts her bakery background to use behind the scenes, supervising production.

Stepping through the unmarked cracker kitchen door is like entering Santa's workshop with elves busily filling holiday orders. One recent order came from the state Department of Natural Resources. About 50 pounds of crackers in three flavors - caraway-rye, six-seed savory, and grilled corn and onion - were to be paired with smoked fish and assorted cheeses at a conference at Monona Terrace.

This cracker-maker is far from a mass producer. Potter's Fine Foods doesn't even have a distributor.

Peter Potter personally delivers fresh crackers to the Milwaukee area's three Outpost Natural Foods stores, Whole Foods Market and Larry's Market in Brown Deer.

His delivery vehicle is a red Mini Cooper with the back seat removed to hold the crackers.

Last year, the business didn't make a profit. But the Potters expect to finish this year in the black.

"We've surpassed our business plan projections," Nancy Potter said. "Going into Milwaukee this fall doubled our sales."

'Fresh bread note'

Both science and creativity go into Potter's Crackers. Peter Potter developed his palate while earning his food science degree, which included training in tasting. Nancy Potter dabbled in cracker-making when she owned the bakery.

"You want the dough to have a great mouth feel, but you also want to be able to work with it," she said. "Ideally, the mouth feel of a cracker will be crisp and not too bubbly with air pockets. It should have a tiny bit of flake and not be too oily. We could add tons of fat to make it easier to work with, but we want it leaner."

If you compare the taste of a typical store-bought cracker that's likely at least three months old with a Potter's cracker that's no more than a few weeks old, there's a detectable "fresh bread note" in the Potter's cracker, Peter Potter said. "You really can tell the difference, and people don't realize how great a fresh cracker is until they taste it."

The whole-wheat crackers begin as dough mixed in a 20-quart commercial mixer. A worker feeds the dough through a sheeter machine that flattens it to a specified thickness. The flattened dough next is wrapped around a large rolling pin to be handed off to another employee, who uses a pastry cutter with five wheels to cut the dough in one direction, and another cutter with six wheels to cut it the other direction, creating rectangular crackers.

An industrial convection oven with two chambers bakes the crackers at 325 degrees for nine to 15 minutes, depending on the variety. Potter's bakes 12 pans at a time with roughly 5 ounces (or one finished bag) per sheet pan. They make 10 different crackers every weekday.

Once the crackers come out of the oven, they are cooled and placed in large plastic bins to be packaged by hand in cellophane bags closed with twist ties.

"These crackers aren't in a box," Peter Potter said. "You can see what you're buying."

The crackers sell for anywhere from $4 to $5.99 per 5-ounce bag, depending on the retail location.

Farm-fresh ingredients

So far, the Potters are buying the majority of their fresh ingredients from three farms within a short drive of Madison: West Star Farm, Sprouting Acres and Harmony Valley in Viroqua. Sprouting Acres is the only one that's not certified organic, but the food there is grown without chemicals.

Peter Potter has personally picked fresh basil at West Star Farm to get a better price. When the same farm picked sweet corn last summer, the Potters purchased 40 dozen ears on three separate occasions, shucked the corn themselves, roasted it, cut it off the cobs and froze it for later use.

Onions arrive at the kitchen in 40-pound burlap bags fresh from the farm.

A local dairy drops off organic butter and organic milk in glass bottles.

"We're seasonal, so our crackers are based on what we can source locally," said Peter Potter. "Think about how short the supply cycle is. I go to a farm to pick up fresh ingredients, we make the crackers and we deliver them a short distance within a week.

"There's no other cracker in Wisconsin like ours."

Consider the late fall and early winter flavors: apple graham, caraway-rye, sweet potato, grilled corn and onion, toasted sesame, garlic and baby onion, cranberry graham, six-seed savory, pesto, chili pepper, cranberry-wild rice, rosemary and cheddar-mustard.

Flecks of fresh cranberry are visible in the cranberry-wild rice crackers, as are green shreds of Granny Smith apple peels in the apple grahams.

Their goal isn't to grow into a big business but to stay local and cultivate relationships with farmers who supply their ingredients and shop owners who sell their crackers, said Peter Potter, a regular at farmers markets during the growing season.

"We're thinking we might eventually go into Chicago to sell our crackers, but we have no aspirations to ship to California or New York," he said. "Then it wouldn't be local or fresh. We also aren't set up to ship."

A flavorful local product

Potter's Crackers are available at several shops in the Madison area, including Fromagination, a new cheese market on the Capitol Square that specializes in cut-to-order artisanal cheeses; Willy Street Co-Op; Whole Foods; Steve's Wine; Metcalfe Sentry; Grape and Company; and Regent Market Co-Op. A few restaurants serve them, too, including Weary Traveler; Brasserie V; and Quivey's Grove.

Potter's are the best-selling crackers at Fromagination, said owner Ken Monteleone. Monteleone, who makes it his business to know Wisconsin's food artisans, said he isn't aware of any other Wisconsin artisan specializing in crackers.

Larry's Market in Brown Deer carries a large assortment of Potter's Crackers. Co-owner Steve Ehlers is a fan of Peter Potter's flavor palate.

"He's not bound by conventional standards of what a cracker is," said Ehlers. "He's always thinking outside the box. The flavors are great, and it's a truly local product."

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