Miracal Bread

When Plan B means big flavor bread without the brick and mortar

PHOTOGRAPHY BY MICHAEL TROUTMAN

Huy Vu, baker and owner-operator of Miracal Bread, likes to jokingly refer to his sourdough as “the new Wonder bread.” Even though its name Miracal was mistakenly misspelled, the bread is definitely a wonder; it is nothing short of “mira-calous” with big bursts of flavor in a 1½ pound loaf and a top crust the color of roasted chestnuts.

On any given Tuesday you can find Vu, signature cargo pants, tie-dyed T-shirt and sandals, at the Alvarado Street farmers market selling his breads—pecan brown sugar with lemon zest, blue corn, rye and rosemary, chicharron, jalapeño and Cheddar and his most popular variety: garlic, sundried tomato and mozzarella. His secret: minced fresh garlic, sautéed in butter. Vu is all about the endless possibilities of ingredients.

“I get bored easily,” he admits and then adds, “Maybe that’s why I love doing this.”

You have to love it when you are the one-man-band of bread: baker, buyer, dishwasher and marketer.

Vu is always on the move. Even when he is standing still, he rocks back and forth, or shifts side to side, or cracks his knuckles as if something is about to begin. So it is really no surprise that this whole thing started at one of his favorite hangouts: the Morris Dill Tennis Courts in Pacific Grove, where he loves to play pickleball. It’s a far cry from the office job he trained for.

You can blame it on the recession of 2011, but a bachelor’s degree in economics and accounting from UC Santa Barbara landed him nowhere. Vu quickly found out he didn’t like the field. “Numbers can change really quickly according to what your bosses tell you and no one was hiring anyway,” he says.

When Vu moved back to the Monterey Peninsula, he got a job at English Ales Brewery in Marina but this still did not satisfy his restlessness or creativity. He enjoyed the product, but not the production line aspect. Yet the idea of breadmaking was born while hanging around all that live yeast action. He watched a few YouTube videos and a friend lent him the book Flour Salt Water Yeast by Ken Forkish. He says he learns best by doing and watching, not reading, and admits somewhat reluctantly that he still does not own one single book on baking.

After taking a year off and exploring his birthplace of Ho Chi Minh City, Vietnam, where his parents still keep his childhood home (Vu calls the city “capitalism on steroids”), he returned to California in 2020, with a mindset to do sourdough. At that time, the full tilt force of COVID- 19 had just begun and lockdown was everywhere. As it turned out, so was sourdough baking! All of a sudden everyone was doing it.

Vu started back playing pickleball at the Pacific Grove courts and casually mentioned to a friend that he was searching for an established sourdough starter to start his own baking project. Through a stroke of good luck, the friend hooked him up with Dario Aguirre, the baker at Claudio’s Specialty Breads, who gave Vu his very own sourdough starter. This sent him into a state of turbo-charged baking while his hungry, happy, carb-craving pickleball friends got all the free samples.

Unlike the hollow crusty rolls of Vietnam, which serve as a vehicle for stuffings such as cilantro, jalapeño, steamed ham or other dried meat, Vu wanted to come up with an already “fully loaded bread” as he describes it, “more moisture with a doughy interior with fillings baked in.” One of his most recent varieties contains pine nuts, smoked paprika and anchovy-stuffed olives. He pulls the dough into a circle, careful to keep the thickness the same all the way around, then pats the fillings gently down into the dough, quickly gathers up the corners and turns it over, tucking in and rotating the dough to shape it into a boule or a ball.

Vu currently bakes out of his house (using a cottage food permit) and the day I visited, he was ready to put the last eight or nine loaves in the oven. He started the night before at 5pm by mixing the dough and then putting it to rest in the fridge overnight for the first phase of “proofing,” which allows acids to form and gives it the characteristic sour taste. At 5am the next morning, he punches down the dough, adds the fillings and then lets the dough rest for the second proofing.

“Yes it’s a long day,” Vu says as he puts his soft white dough mounds in cast iron pans and into a 550° F oven, with another cast iron pan placed on top as a cover. “I’m all about the hand made, not the machine made,” he says, and hands on it is, especially when the oven can only hold three loaves at a time.

The breads bake 20 minutes, but the last six to 12 minutes are the most crucial for getting the deep rich chestnut color on top.

“I gave up on a timer, but have been training my nose to pick up the scent when the bread is done. I’m getting pretty good at it. After all, I know people eat with their eyes too, so I have to stay close to the loaves to get the color and smell I want,” he says.

Vu has only been baking since March of this year, but is now selling at both the Alvarado Street and Marina farmers markets, as well as at the Oldtown Salinas market occasionally.

As he loads his freshly baked bread (a total of 42 loaves, which will sell out well before the farmers market closes), Vu tells me, “I’m still in the experimental phase. A few weeks ago I brought a bread to market which I called the McFlurry—crumbled Oreo cookies soaked in condensed milk.” He gestures thumbs down. “That did not work at all, but I’m still enjoying the work. Just still not ready for the brick and mortar. How could I run off for three or four hours of pickleball?” he reasons and then adds somewhat hesitantly, “And oh yeah…one other thing. I still have not figured out the sleep part.”

Miracal Bread
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