Mill Song Bakery brings naturally-leavened Latino flavors to Harrisonburg, VA
WORDS | Sarah Golibart Gorman PHOTOS | Courtesy of Mill Song Bakery
One by one, Nico Melas Febres’ mother and six aunts migrated north from Lima, Peru to Springfield, Virginia. Side by side with cousins in his grandmother’s living room, Melas learned the family catering craft, skillfully sandwiching alfajores with dulce de leche, carefully pinching empanada edges around boiled eggs and black olives, and folding boxes for wedding cakes encased in marzipan. Now, Melas and his sons form an assembly line of their own, stocking their farmers market table with naturally-leavened loaves of bread wrapped in brown paper bags stamped with Mill Song Bakery, or Canto del Molino.
Sourdough’s serenade didn’t fully grip Melas until a visitor gifted him with a heritage Italian sourdough starter. Bread baking became a weekly chore at Melas’ urban homestead, but opening a bakery only became a possibility after apprenticing to Robèrt, the head baker at The Community of the Ark, a longstanding Christian community in the south of France. Melas earned his baker’s cap and apron after months of preparing for his first solo bake in the wood-fired oven. His second apprenticeship at Seylou Bakery and Mill in Washington, D.C. introduced him to working with fresh-milled flour and grains from the Chesapeake Bay watershed.
These experiences led Melas to deviate from the commercial yeast and roller-milled all-purpose flour used in the pastries of his childhood. Instead, Melas uses a stone mill to grind his grain: “I think it’s important to use organic, old varieties [of] heritage wheat and ancient grains to make fresh, local flour.” 90% of Melas’ grain is grown in Rockingham and Shenandoah counties.
Naturally-leavened bread, or sourdough, is easier to digest due to the pre-digestion of gluten during the leavening process, “so our body doesn’t have to do all of the work itself,” Melas points out. Sourdough has a rich history in traditional cultures worldwide, including in Central America. While waiting in a long line of eager bread buyers at Harrisonburg’s farmers market, I heard Melas switch between English, Spanish, and French to explain the merits of his bread. “Pan de masa madre, no muy acido, pan de abuelita.” In Spanish, the word for sourdough is not pan acido, acid bread, but the much warmer masa madre, mother dough.
Melas offers an ancestral taste that’s both familiar and perhaps new for Harrisonburg residents. “What I’m making is more of what would have been made in a horno de barro, a dirt or brick wood-fired oven back in the old days.”
As of November 2022, Spanish is the most commonly-spoken home language in Harrisonburg City Public Schools, followed by English, Arabic, Kurdish, Tigrinya, Swahili, and others. As our cities and schools become increasingly diverse, so do our markets.
Enter the bolillo, a lightly-baked Mexican roll perfect for tortas, or sandwiches. “I bake the baguettes and bolillos together with the same dough. I pull out my bolillos first. Make them nice and light; you need to be able to sink your teeth through two layers,” Melas reveals. Alongside bolillos, Melas’ table is full of approachable French classics and sliceable sandwich breads packed with grains favored by Friendly City residents.
Mill Song’s stone mill grinds out an old tune. We listen, hoping for a familiar symphony of grain grinding into flour flecked with memories, each bit of bran carrying a piece of heritage and history.
This article first appeared in our 2023 Fall publication, The Grain Issue .
You can find Mill Song bread at Harrisonburg’s Saturday farmers market or pick up pre-ordered bread at the bakery: 1130 Lincolnshire Drive, Harrisonburg.
Sarah Golibart Gorman is a writer and educator from Harrisonburg, Virginia with ties to the tidewater flatlands of Virginia’s Eastern Shore. Her mission is to share the best food stories in Harrisonburg and beyond. Catch her adventures on Instagram @friendlycityfoodie
