—MICHAEL
I had been coming to the store on and off since ’84. It looked different then—it seemed small and exciting. Then as the store changed and spread out, that was nice. There was more of the same energy glowing in a bigger space.
—JOSÉ RUIZ,
FORMER MEMBER
By the beginning of nineties, the original concept of a small cheese store had expanded greatly. The selection of cheeses from around the world was enormous, and there were many more baked goods. The marriage of bread and cheese remained strong. Nationwide there was a growing interest in rustic bread; our passion for bread making had already led us to develop many recipes, so the timing was perfect. The Cheese Board was gradually becoming as much a bakery as a specialty cheese store.
When the sixties finally ended in Berkeley, sometime around 1994, the only thing left standing from that bygone era was the Cheese Board. Odd that a time and place so thoroughly associated with outrage and rebellion should all melt down into four hundred or so tasty blobs of Camembert, Port Salut, and Bleu des Causses. Those of us old enough to remember its first tiny storefront have watched fads in politics, haircuts, nose rings, and bread dough come and go, but the Cheese Board stands alone.
—ALICE KAHN, WRITER AND CUSTOMER
With the increased space and redoubled energy, the collective members decided to push back the opening time from 10
A.M.
to 7
A.M.
for breakfast customers. Soon we found we were running a café—the Morning Bakery—complete with espresso drinks, homemade jam, and pastries. As the store’s focus became more bakery oriented, the shifts began earlier and earlier. (Now, some shifts start as early as 2
A.M.
)
I really love doing the coffee line in the morning. You get to know the customers, the regulars. You start playing a game with yourself: having the change ready in your hand.
—ERIN
2003
I have eaten my way through only about one-sixteenth of the products, but it’s not just about the cheese or the sun-dried tomato focaccia. It’s about the collective spirit of the place, even though like a Broadway hit, most of the original cast has come and gone. I remember when some of the new kids on the block of Shattuck near Vine cut their first slices of smoked Gouda.
—ALICE KAHN
Food is still central to our neighborhood. A former Cheese Boarder runs the Phoenix Pastificio a few blocks away; Poulet, a deli-café, is down the street; Masse’s, a French bakery across Shattuck, provides us with birthday cakes; César serves Spanish-style tapas across the street; Grégoire, a tiny takeout place, is around the corner from us. And many of our old friends are still here: the Juice Bar, Saul’s Deli, Chez Panisse, and Peet’s.
Recently, the collective voted to close on a Saturday in October in order to march for peace in San Francisco. We met our customers and
neighbors at the BART station—a familiar multigenerational group. While this new peace movement is reminiscent of the sixties, when we look back over the years, we find that the food we make has infiltrated the home more easily than our politics filtered into the American workplace. Even supermarket chains now carry artisan breads and specialty cheeses.
Much of what we have done has come about by chance, by following our passion for food with the support of our community. The belief that every voice is central has sustained us over the years. We have never wavered
from the original vision of a democratic workplace. This commitment has made it possible to constantly reinvent ourselves while remaining faithful to our political vision and our belief in good, honest food.
I think we are political in a more subtle, natural sense than in the past. We used to talk much more about politics at meetings and when we got together outside of the store. Actually, in a practical sense, we are just as political as we have ever been.
—MICHAEL
The most political thing we do is that we all own the business together. We let that be our statement.
—JULIA
To me, one of the basic principles of the Cheese Board is to create a great product at a reasonable price, with a generosity of spirit. If you can do all that, the business will thrive. If you can do all that while at the same time creating a democratic workplace, it can be an incredibly fun place to work. These components play on each other—they influence and support each other. When it’s working, the sum is greater than its parts.
—S. S.
Marching in San Francisco, 2003.
SISTER COLLECTIVES
As with many successful businesses, the impulse to expand and capitalize on a good idea occasionally infects the Cheese Board. Unlike most businesses, the motivation for the Cheese Board is not accumulating greater wealth but advancing the notion of worker cooperatives.
The first such endeavor was the
Swallow Restaurant Collective. In 1972, the Cheese Board, after over a year of planning, opened a sister collective called the Swallow. The Swallow was an elegant buffet-style restaurant located on the bottom floor of the University of California Art Museum, next door to the campus film archive. Museum-goers could eat inside or outside, surrounded by sculpture. Initially, Cheese Board members joined with the new Swallow staff to launch the restaurant. After this transitional supportive phase was over, the Cheese Boarders returned to the original collective. The Swallow collective had a good run for almost two decades, but eventually succumbed to the combined difficulties of being a collective institution and trying to operate inside a university bureaucracy.
I think the Swallow was probably an example of a collective not gone wrong so much as gone wild, really not kept in check. There were incredibly high moments of great cooking at the Swallow, but it always had a wild streak in it. No one was holding it down, or together even.
—PAT DARROW
More recently, the Cheese Board has participated in an effort to launch a network of worker cooperatives modeled on the Cheese Board and using its bread and pastry recipes. The network is called the
Association of Arizmendi Cooperatives, in honor of the priest José María Arizmendiarrieta, the founder of the Spanish Mondragón Cooperatives. This network has opened one Arizmendi Bakery Cooperative in Oakland and another in San Francisco. These are independent cooperatives owned and operated by their workers. The Cheese Board provided some initial seed money and training, and gave the new bakeries Cheese Board recipes. At the time of this writing, the newest Arizmendi Bakery is being established in Emeryville, just south of Berkeley. The new cooperatives, which are members of the association (and own the association), will then provide financial and technical support for starting other new cooperatives based on the same model. The Cheese Board is also a nominal part of the association.
The Cheese Board has little appetite for expanding its own enterprise beyond its borders. We want to promote worker cooperatives, but not at the risk of changing our own scale or culture. Some of our lack of ambition can be attributed to a philosophical distaste for society’s dependence on and glorification of growth and expansion, and some can be because of our natural inclination to take it easy and keep things on a smaller scale.
THE CHEESE BOARD: REMEMBRANCES AND AN ACCOLADE
My connection with the Cheese Board began in 1971, when I had the good fortune to find myself in the company of many other young enthusiasts who had a crazy notion of creating a very fine restaurant—with no previous experience. The restaurant was Chez Panisse, and I became its first chef. At the time, I was hardly a chef and Chez Panisse was hardly a restaurant. The Cheese Board, however, just around the corner, was already an established icon in what came to be a very special neighborhood in north Berkeley, California. At the time, the Cheese Board was a hole-in-the-wall with precious little interior space, so people would line up out the door to get their irresistible cheeses, always offered up with great, good vibes and free tastes by founders Elizabeth and Sahag Avedisian and their fellows. The original Peet’s Coffee, Tea, and Spices store was within a few paces, as was Lenny’s Famous Meats, Butcher to the Gods, and by 1973, I had opened my Pig-by-the-Tail Delicatessen across the street from Chez Panisse. Alice Medrich’s original Cocolat store soon followed. The Berkeley Gourmet Ghetto was suddenly there, not by the design of one person or a firm of developers, but by the confluence of people who wished to purvey the best of what there was in artisanal foods while paying respect to the notion of sustainable goods. Though those were not bywords at the time, they were themes of our endeavors, a legacy carried on by the Cheese Board. Quickly, we became friends in that spirit and in daily community life. We celebrated together with group picnics and softball games on the Fourth of July, clapped and smiled together when babies were born, applauded when things went right, cried together when there was loss. The remarkable thing about the Cheese Board is that it began as a genuine collective and continues to be so. That means that everyone gets the same amount of money for every hour worked, and the same benefits, and no one can position him- or herself in a certain job forever until death. It’s one of the most remarkable institutions/businesses in the world, and especially so because in spite of, or because of, its collective nature, it thrives and continues to grow. Well, they do have the best cheese shop in the world.
—Victoria Wise
With no boss running the show, it falls on all of us to be perceptive enough to see what needs to be done before it becomes critical. The Cheese Board is like a beautiful, functioning organic machine. The day is full of moments with all of us working together to get the job done. It’s like an improvisational dance.
—JOHN
There are as many different opinions about what the collective is as there are people working here. We are a cooperative, but there are forty different interpretations of what a cooperative is. People make it what they want it to be.
—SHEHANNA
The Basics:
Equipment, Ingredients, and Methods
EQUIPMENT
At the Cheese Board, we have improvised with equipment from the start. A plastic three-pound baker’s cheese bucket was the standard measure for all dry ingredients in making large and small doughs until the early 1990s, when we finally purchased a large floor scale. We didn’t use baskets to proof rising sourdough loaves until a few years ago, and we still don’t measure or weigh the sourdough starter; the dough maker just pours the starter into a huge spiral mixer, leaving an inch or two at the bottom of the bucket.
To bake from this book, your collection of equipment need only include the basics. The following list is simply a guide and not a set of rules. Bread has been baked for hundreds of years without any specialized tools. Oh, but you do need a metal dough scraper!
