Rosewood bakery creates neighborhood nook
Tucked away on Rosewood Drive, there are loaves of fresh-made focaccia dusted with flour and displays of scones that play with the sweet, salty and savory.
The typically-sweet treat combinations stray from the expected and bake together the best of flavors, and the breads range from pantry staples — like Rosewood sourdough, multigrain and whole wheat — to prosciutto mozzarella.
Crust Bakehouse, just across from Pizza Man, is Rosewood’s bakery. The owners, husband and wife Mark and Angie Lowery, opened the hole-in-the-wall bakery two days before Thanksgiving and business has been steady since, Angie Lowery said.
The couple lives in Rosewood, and knows their customers beyond their usual bread order. They see each other on weekend dog walks, and in some cases, live just next door.
“We want to keep it small,” Angie Lowery said. “Our intent was to be a neighborhood bakery for Rosewood. When you don’t have your hands in it, you can’t control the following.”
The bakehouse is small, and can easily go unnoticed in a small strip of shops off the main road, but the two have built their baking from much smaller beginnings to where it is now.
It started with the bread. They would bake and sell their loaves at Rosewood Market — now with flavors like asiago parmesan and onion fontina focaccia.
Then, they became street-famous for their pizzas. Last spring, the Lowerys set-up their wood-fire brick oven at the Healthy Carolina Farmers Market and made fresh wood-oven pizzas on Greene Street. They sold the traveling oven to pay for the new place, Angie Lowery said, but she does hope to come back to the farmers market with some of Crust’s new goods.
Baking has always been a part of both Angie and Mark Lowery’s lives — they’ve taken classes at the San Francisco Baking Institute and King Arthur Flour in Vermont. Their recipes come from their travels, namely from their favorite bakery in Maine.
They’ve pulled inspiration from bakehouses in San Francisco, as well, with each of their baked creations proving to be a little out of the Columbia bread box.
“Every time we travel we go to different bakeries and see what everybody else is doing,” Angie Lowery said.
Crust started with the bread and the scones ($2.49 each). Angie Lowery’s personal favorite is the chocolate cherry, but ginger pecan falls to a close second. The sausage pepper jack scone, a departure from the traditional glazed or fruit-filled options, is baked with sausage from Pee Dee Ranch in Cheraw, S.C.
Although the scones started out as Crust’s claim to fame, the focaccia bread and 99-cent molasses cookies have quickly become customer favorites, too. The Lowerys have taken the feedback of their customers to create new treats, like the molasses cookies, and are always looking to add new recipes to the mix. There’s even a glass jar of home-baked dog treats!
Angie and Mark Lowery are both fixtures in the small shop, the bulk of which is the actual kitchen space. A glass display and shelves of fresh bread are the only separation between the grand stainless steel ovens and mixers. The couple bakes everything themselves daily.
“There’s no day-old bread here, but we do have a few of my baked goods that are better the next day,” Angie Lowery said.
A tiny sidewalk table outside the front door is the only kind of seating, so Crust is a grab-and-go space, and the hours are a bit limited. Crust is open Tuesday through Friday, 7:30 a.m. to 5:30 p.m., and a Saturday or Sunday scone would be the ideal.
But, it’s a Rosewood-owned, Rosewood-grown bakery that creates breads and baked goods outside the plain Columbia crust.