The Story of Mountain Oven:
Mountain Oven is an organic bakery and millhouse devoted to supporting local food systems, run by Chris Sullivan and Dana Whitcomb.
Local sourcing is of the utmost importance to us and has grown into a mission to build local grain economy in Western Colorado. Creation at Mountain Oven reflects what is in our hearts transmuted through the work of our hands: care for the land, community, and human spirit.
We provide sourdough breads, pastries, and fresh milled flour through in-house events, farmers markets, and regional wholesale distribution.
We bake with intention and care using stone-ground flours freshly milled in-house and natural leaveners for optimal nutrition and flavor. We understand health holistically: our soil, spirits, bodies, sustenance, and community are all inextricably linked. Our work aims to honor this philosophy.
Mountain Oven was founded in 2010 in Crested Butte, Colorado.
It all started from a home oven, with fresh baked loaves of sourdough made for new neighbors shortly after Chris moved to Colorado. A few months later, community encouragement led Chris and a group of friends to launch Mountain Oven as a micro sourdough bakery operating during the “off” hours in the kitchens of other restaurants. Chris’ care and passion for local food cultivated during his college years led naturally to this point.
The early years of baking embedded Chris in the community, and led to the 2014 opening of a farm-to-table cafe. In 2016, Chris and Dana Whitcomb found each other through the farmers market community. Dana had been growing vegetables for years, and was as intensely devoted to local foods as Chris. They quickly fell in love and joined forces in the bakery. There was a lot of work to be done in evolving local food systems and so much more was possible together!
Their shared desire for strengthening local food systems and cultivating community around food ushered in the next evolution of Mountain Oven.
2016 – 2018
Moving to the North Fork
It was time to make a shift in order to live in community with fellow producers and in a place where we could build the bakery of our dreams. As avid gardeners, we were also in need of living in a place where we could garden to our heart’s content.
It required time to figure out the details, but we took a chance at moving the bakery over a mountain pass, out of Crested Butte and into Paonia; a town with the highest concentration of organic farms in the state. A fertile valley with endless fruit orchards as well as potential for local grain production! We moved onto the land, fixed up an old farmhouse, built our garden, and found a space to lease for the bakery in town.
2018 – 2019
A New Direction
We constructed a new kitchen space and reopened in Paonia. It happened as fast as humanly possible! The kitchen was licensed and in production just in time for the first week of farmers markets. We worked endless hours to make sure that the relaunch would land up right.
Back in Crested Butte, we had operated a 7-day/week café, retail and wholesale bakery, farm-to-table catering service, as well as attended two farmers markets. When we moved to Paonia, we shifted our model in a big way – we no longer would operate a retail bakery and instead would focus on wholesale, weekly in-house events, and farmers markets solely. We wanted to do less in a better way, be more in alignment with our core values, and practice our craft at a high level.
This model change worked out well for us. Our new location brought us in closer proximity to new wholesale accounts. Without a restaurant to manage, we were able to improve the quality and increase the quantity of our bread and pastry. We finally found some financial footing – after nearly a decade of running the business on a prayer (and an ever-increasing pile of debt), we found a model that worked for us and didn’t leave us searching for new loans every year. While profit is not the primary driving force behind our reason to bake, it is critical – without it, we cannot pay staff appropriately, or invest in ourselves or our community.
2020 – 2023
Growing With The Grain
In early 2020 (pre-pandemic), we met with our local community and set out our vision for a local network of grain growers, millers, and bakers.
October 2020 brought us the opportunity to buy our facility. This purchase included the Paonia Community Kitchen, a second commercial kitchen located in the 6000 square foot building. We became owners of our facility as well as took over stewarding the Community Kitchen. Having this new found long term stability, we were ready to commit even more to our work and got very busy building out a mill house on site. We ordered a 48″ New American Stone Mill with sifting equipment – a massive upgrade from the mills we had previously used.
We’ve spent the last few years learning a lot about grains, milling, and baking with fresh-milled flour. Looking forward, there is much more work and investment needed to realize the full potential of our local grain economy. As we come into 2024, we are expanding our wholesale distribution and steadily building out our millhouse, preparing to install additional grain processing equipment currently on order. There is more to come by way of grain processing equipment, improving energy efficiency of our facility, creating a beautiful community gathering space to break bread, supporting the community kitchen as a resource for value added producers and food businesses, and strengthening the relationships throughout our local food system.
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