Biga Bakery Is Leavened with Much Friendship
By IAN FEIN
During the most of their nine years together at Biga Bakery, owners
Beth Kramer and Douglas Reid, who are married, rarely saw each other.
Ms. Kramer would work through the night - putting in more than
15 hours to bake as many as 1,000 loaves per night - while Mr.
Reid would spend 14 hours behind the Biga counter during the day,
cooking countless breakfast sandwiches.
"In the summer the only time we'd see each other was
Saturday nights, when we would have dinner together," Ms. Kramer
said, sitting at the couple's own kitchen counter this week in
their Skiff's Lane home.
SRC="http://www.mvgazette.com/news/2005/11/11/content/biga_beth_doug_sm.jpg" "We'd have to take time off in the winter to
reacquaint," added Mr. Reid. "Every year it would feel like
the first date."
Beginning this morning, Ms. Kramer and Mr. Reid will have the time
for a second date.
Yesterday was the last day of Biga Bakery.
The business will be sold next week to Jane and Fella Cecilio of
Vineyard Haven, who plan to reopen under another name by the end of the
month.
Ms. Kramer and Mr. Reid both acknowledged that the upcoming
transition - though welcome - will not necessarily be easy.
They said they know they will stay on the Island, but have no plans
beyond the near future.
The only priority for the time being is Ms. Kramer's health.
She learned in May that she had breast cancer after an annual mammogram
at the Martha's Vineyard Hospital.
Ms. Kramer this week downplayed her experience with cancer and spoke
with confidence and candor about the illness. She said she has taken
strength from the incredible support of the Island community.
"We get flowers pretty much every day, and I went through
boxes and boxes and boxes of cards. We're surrounded by love
- literally," Ms. Kramer said, petting their well-fed feline
friend Harold, who adopted them at the bakery six years ago and is now
sprawled out comfortably on the counter in their home.
"I feel like the luckiest person - lucky it was found,
and lucky I have a place where I can be with friends, family and with
Douglas, who has been unbelievable," Ms. Kramer continued.
"In many, many ways these have been the best few months of my
life. I got to sit down and slow down and see just how amazingly
beautiful it all is - and it is."
In some ways it sounds as if the last few months have been harder on
Mr. Reid, who kept the bakery open all summer and did not get to spend
the time with Ms. Kramer he would have liked. The interactions with
customers every morning also never afforded him any distance from the
illness.
"I could never get away from it because when I'm at work
everybody asks. It's great that people care, but you just never
stop hearing it," he said. "And I've had some bad
experiences with cancer. It's really hard when somebody
who's so much of your life is stricken with it."
Ms. Kramer and Mr. Reid first met 13 years ago when she came to the
Island for a one-day vacation. "It was a really good
vacation," she said. "Still is."
The unlikely couple met in the office of the Beach Plum Inn in
Chilmark, where Mr. Reid was a chef and Ms. Kramer was a guest. She was
using the phone to check the weather report; he needed it to place a
hurried meat order. Mr. Reid rudely took the phone.
Despite their inauspicious start, Ms. Kramer's brother set up
another meeting between them when she returned to the Vineyard two weeks
later. Mr. Reid reluctantly took her on a bicycle ride to Lucy Vincent
Beach, "and that was it," Ms. Kramer said.
"We watched the sunset in Gay Head that night and have never
been apart since," Mr. Reid said. "She moved in with me
pretty much the next day."
Ms. Kramer originally intended to stay for the summer, but she began
baking for Eden in Vineyard Haven and Mr. Reid soon convinced her to
start her own wholesale bread business. She borrowed money from Mr. Reid
and - again at his suggestion - named the business Biga,
which means starter dough in Italian.
Ms. Kramer said she had no idea the bread would take off so quickly.
Most of her bread-baking was self-taught through trial-and-error.
"The community here is so responsive. If there's something
they like, they'll tell you. And if there's something they
don't like, they'll certainly let you know," she said.
One of Biga's first and biggest wholesale customers -
Stephen Bernier of Cronig's Market - approached Ms. Kramer
about the retail space next to the West Tisbury post office when it
became available in spring 1996. Ms. Kramer said she liked the shop but
knew that she would not be able to finance or run the bakery operation
there herself.
She and Mr. Reid signed the Biga lease together and married a few
days later.
Mr. Reid said honestly that he did not always enjoy his work at
Biga."I think I walked into it unknowingly," he said.
"My vision was much different than reality."
He described it as culture shock coming from his 20 years as a chef.
Mr. Reid worked in a four-star French restaurant in Ithaca, N.Y., before
taking the Beach Plum Inn position in 1990.
"I went from foie gras to macaroni salad," Mr. Reid
said, still wearing his trademark Biga baseball cap more than four hours
after closing the shop for the day. Mr. Reid said he looks forward to
waking up in the morning, squeezing fresh juice and eating homemade
croissants. But he admitted that he did not know how long he will be
able to go before he feels like he needs to find a new job.
"I really don't know what to think," Mr. Reid
said. "I'm baffled. I haven't not had a job since
August 1989 - that was about two weeks, and I couldn't stand
it. I don't know what idle is."
Ms. Kramer said that she too looks forward to a new chapter in her
life.
"I love baking, and I feel incredibly fortunate to have found
something I loved so much. But I couldn't do anything else. It
controlled me - and all that I did - in a lot of
ways," she said.
Ms. Kramer and Mr. Reid still have a commercial bakery set-up
adjoining their home; they have talked about doing some baking for the
farmers' market or another small venue. "But I know that I
don't want to go back to that kind of life," she said.
"I'm working on a few projects now, but none of them involve
bread."
Ms. Kramer praised the network of cancer support on the Island
- singling out the Angel Flights program, which flies her and
other Vineyard residents to their daily radiation treatment in Hyannis
at no charge. But she said she wants to develop a resource center at the
Martha's Vineyard Hospital to centralize some of the services.
"A lot of it is word-of-mouth," she said.
"It's just a matter of putting it all together."
Starting this spring, Ms. Kramer plans to teach a free yoga class
for women with breast cancer. She is also in the early stages of
developing a study to see whether the Island has an overall elevated
level of cancer, and is considering writing a play about her
experiences.
Both Mr. Reid and Ms. Kramer this week wanted to tell people to get
their annual check-ups, and to thank their staff and customers for their
years of support.
"It's definitely going to be difficult," Mr. Reid
said, the reality of the impending closure slowly settling in.
"It's so much of my routine. If I'm home on the
Vineyard I think I need to be at Biga. And Biga's not going to
exist anymore."
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