A few days before Christmas, a polar vortex is scouring the Appalachians and driving an icy wind through the streets of Asheville, punishing last-minute shoppers. Inside the spice-scented kitchen of OWL Bakery on Haywood Road, though, the afternoon couldn’t be cozier. In stocking caps and retro sweaters, looking like the coolest elves in Santa’s workshop, a crew of bakers are bringing the local landscape, with its abundant nut and fruit trees and lush evergreens, back to life — as a dessert that will land on some 50 fortunate tables.
Susannah Gebhart has always been drawn to the stories behind culinary traditions like bûche de Noël: Before opening OWL Bakery, she studied food anthropology. photograph by Tim Robison
One baker carefully spreads hickory-nut crème diplomate — a variation of pastry cream — over a sheet of delicate genoise cake that has both acorn and chestnut flour in its recipe. Once rolled and cut to length, the cakes are coated in a chocolate ganache flavored with black walnuts and applied to look like bark. Steady hands position slices of dried apples, sourced from the region’s orchards, to look like bracket mushrooms. A sprinkling of crystallized evergreen hemlock (the coniferous tree, not the poisonous plant) and cacao nibs from nearby French Broad Chocolate, plus a dusting of “snow,” made from powdered natural mica, complete the illusion. OWL’s bûche de Noël — the name means “Yule log” in French — looks like a scene from an Appalachian forest. And, thanks to its foraged wild plant ingredients, it tastes like the forest, too.
“The natural world has always inspired us as a bakery, and the bûche de Noël is our representation of its offerings and how they can provide comfort and light in the season of darkness,” says Susannah Gebhart, OWL’s owner. “It also feels important to us to honor the traditions and symbolism of what we make, and the bûche de Noël is meant to be shared in celebration with your community.”
The bûche de Noël grew out of solstice rituals in northern Europe, where the burning of a great log marked the turn of the year and the culmination of the monthlong festival known as Yule. Like many pre-Christian traditions, it found a place in Christmas celebrations. But in the 19th century, as fewer and fewer French families had the open hearths that allowed for wood fires, the Yule log became a cake — and a way for pastry chefs to show off their skills. The first recorded mention of the bûche de Noël as a dessert appears in an 1898 cookbook by Parisian pâtissier Pierre Lacam.
That history makes the dessert a natural fit with both the seasonal offerings and traditional roots of OWL. The bakery’s full name is Old World Levain, a reference to the naturally leavened bread that has helped win OWL a loyal following at its original home in a little yellow cottage in West Asheville and, now, a second location in North Asheville. OWL also has a pastry program that reflects Gebhart’s academic studies in food anthropology as well as her commitment to local sourcing, manifested in both sweet and savory pastries that may showcase summertime berries or autumn pears, delicate spring greens or comforting winter squash.
The bakery’s bûche de Noël has evolved into an expression of Appalachian abundance, too. Early editions hewed closer to the French original, with a chocolate genoise cake and a hazelnut-flavored pastry cream.
Nuts and other ingredients foraged by the Asheville-based Acornucopia Project infuse each Yule log with the flavors of the local landscape. photograph by Tim Robison
Over time, though, Gebhart has tapped her local connections — especially a partnership with farmer and forager Bill Whipple, founder of the Acornucopia Project — to incorporate more local ingredients. The nuts highlight the richness of the region’s forests, and the apples represent its agricultural history (nearby Henderson County produces more than 60 percent of the state’s crop). The chocolate comes from French Broad Chocolates, whose factory is just five minutes away. Gebhart finds the hemlock in her own neighborhood. Crafting these ingredients into a complex cake takes place over four days, a big commitment as the OWL crew prepares other holiday preorders like chocolate babka and cranberry pavlova. For Gebhart, the effort is worthwhile.
“It feels really wonderful to create something that both brings delight and brings people together,” she says. “Baked goods are at the heart of so many memories and rituals, both over the holidays and in small and tender moments throughout the year. This cake’s symbolism is so specific and seasonal, and when I see customers coming back year after year to purchase it, I know that it has a special place in their gatherings and their lives.”
At festive tables and firesides in homes across Asheville, the bûche de Noël cakes’ mica snow sparkles in the candlelight. Inside the cakes, sweet and nutty, the creamy hickory filling brings rich notes of butterscotch that balance the taste of the black walnut ganache. It will be months before OWL offers that unique gathering of flavors again: The bûche de Noël comes but once a year.
OWL Bakery
West Asheville
295 Haywood Road
Asheville, NC 28806
North Asheville
197 Charlotte Street
Asheville, NC 28801
owlbakery.com
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