Odd Bird Farm Opens Great Barrington Bakery
Fresh-baked bread at Odd Bird Farm Bakery.
Kurt Barbieri and Anne-Marie Lasher's pastries and breads have been flying out of farmers markets these past two years. Now patrons won't have to wait for a Saturday to pick up their favorite baked goods.
Barbieri has 30 years of experience as a pastry chef. He started Odd Bird Farm selling eggs on the side of the road in Housatonic about 10 years ago, and later at Taft Farms.
"I started keeping chickens, and I would take some in if somebody had some random birds or chickens they needed to get rid of for whatever reason. I would take them in and let them live out their lives," he said. "I worked at Daily Bread in Great Barrington before it closed. I was there for 18 years, and I was at the Marketplace for 10 years, and that is where I met Anne-Marie."
Lasher also has a background in the food industry, having worked as a chef and run a catering business while living in Philadelphia. She and her husband semi-retired to the Berkshires after wanting to do something different.
The two met in Marketplace Kitchen Table's pastry department and talked about what they would like to bake.
They'd joked about being a little frustrated in their ability to innovate. Wanting to be more creative with their recipes, they decided to try out their ideas at the local farmers' markets.
"It was such a large production kitchen, they had cafes in the store and catering," he said. "There wasn't a lot of creativity that you could do. And we got talking and then we decided to start doing the farmers markets last year, last spring, and we got such a great response from them that we decided to open a brick and mortar."
Their bakery at 490 Main St. used to be an office and a flower shop. They transformed the whole space into a commercial kitchen to be able to bake dozens more than what they could at Lasher's house.
"We were doing it in my house kitchen, which meant that our office was on my dining room table. My husband can't wait to be on the dining room table. Today was the first day that all of Odd Bird Farm is out of my house," she laughed last week.
The bakery is open for take-out only and will serve a variety of pastries, cookies, breads, breakfast sandwiches, soups, and more. The partners were excited and a little nervous about opening up.
"Very confident, like there's definitely that little bit of, I'm terrified because it's a new business, and you just don't know what to expect, right? But we also feel very positive. We've gotten we have a following already from the farmers markets," Lasher said.
The bakery is open Monday through Saturday from 6 a.m. to 3 p.m.
Tags: new business, bakery,
