Backyard Baking with Bethany Handsaker

By Diana Schmidt
Photos by Paul Sloth

It’s a glorious, sunny day and we’re in Bethany Handsaker’s backyard. There’s water boiling in a Dutch oven over a small bed of coals and a miniature clay oven pumping out a lot of heat. There’s one stuffed focaccia that’s ready to eat and another one headed for the oven. Bethany has put out a lovely spread for us as she shares some of her secrets about cooking and baking and a little bit about the source of her inspiration, her mother.

Bethany loves to bake. She has been baking since she was old enough to pull at her mother’s apron strings. Even in the heat of the summer, she manages to turn out some of her favorite creations like pizza and focaccia thanks to the outdoor oven she and her dad, John, built in her backyard.

It’s a work in progress, they explain. Bethany’s dream oven will be built of bricks made especially for outdoor ovens. The current model is a collection of recycled bricks and concrete, under a clay oven. On this day, surrounded by her family, we’re getting a chance to watch Bethany in action. She’s turned her backyard into a makeshift kitchen.

Bethany slides a stuffed focaccia into the 800-degree oven and asks her two sons to wash up so they can help her prepare another. She pulls together leftovers from her potato soup with bacon, plucks more herbs from the nearby garden and hands the youngest a chef’s knife.

Both of Bethany’s boys, Caleb, 9, and Noah, 11, have been helping in the kitchen since they were young. For Caleb, the best part about helping is “just being with mom.”

“I get to eat cool stuff,” says Noah. Both answers fill Bethany with pride.

Nowadays, when she’s not creating in her own kitchen, Bethany bakes pizzas in the café at Outpost’s Mequon store. She invited us to her home not far from the Mequon store to show us how she manages to keep baking through the summer and to share some of what she learned from her mother.

Bethany’s first memory of baking with her mom, Melanie, is all of piles of dough she and her siblings helped knead.

“I’m not sure if mom was keeping us kids busy, or if we really needed all that dough. So many piles of dough!”

Both mother and daughter are as gracious as they are humble, sharing their baked goods with friends, neighbors, teachers, and each other. Both claim the other’s baked goods are the best.

Handmade cards are sometimes tied to the loaves. Melanie recounts her favorite card from Bethany, “I’ll always knead and loaf you.”

Bethany is quick to talk about what a skilled baker her mom is, beaming at her, “You taught me everything I know. Thanks, mom.”

Melanie humbly looks to her hands, but when Bethany looks away, whispers, “Bethany says she learned to bake from me, but she’s taken baking farther than I taught her.” 

What’s the biggest difference between how you bake and how your mom bakes?

“My mom is very scientific as a baker and can tell you why things happen or don’t. Learning from her gave me an intuition for how the dough should feel – the right stretch, the right feel. She’ll tell you what a great baker I am, but she’s the one who is wonderful.”

What are the 3 ingredients you can’t live without?”

“Flour, yeast and cheese. I have 12 varieties of mint, so mint needs to be added that list, too!”

What is so special about your stuffed focaccia bread?

 “Once when Billy (Bethany’s husband) and I went camping, my mom sent us with dough that had finely chopped vegetables and herbs in the dough. I realized, then, that dough could be filled with almost anything.”

What else do you bake in the outdoor oven?

“PIZZA!” Melanie responds before her daughter has a chance. “Long before pizza started to be gourmet, Bethany started putting leftovers and the garden harvest on our pizzas with delicious cream sauces.”