Top of the Worlds

Former lawyer Michael Dolich found happiness in the dough.

by Drew Lazor

Ryan Brandenberg THE CHALLAHMAN BAKETH: Michael Dolich shows off his wares at Four Worlds Bakery in West Philly. (CLICK IMAGE FOR LARGER VERSION)

It takes Michael "Challahman" Dolich a few minutes to answer the doorbell at Kaffa Crossing, the Ethiopian café that doubles as home base for Four Worlds Bakery. Introductions are warm but hasty, and before I've even stepped in, the slight, shaggy-haired 38-year-old Nebraska native has already doubled back, skittering across the still-empty coffee house, through the kitchen and onto the concrete patio leading to his 15- by 20-foot baking space.

He makes a beeline to a flour-scattered work surface, where a half a dozen or so of hefty bulbs of dough await their turn in the hot seat. Offering early-morning pleasantries over noodly laptop tunes and the inoffensive hum of a slow-churning mill, Dolich's fingers find a small blade and run a triumvirate of slits into the tops of each loaf. They fly into the oven before I can even find out what kind of bread it is.

I ask him if it'd be OK to chat outside. "I have to stay in here," replies Dolich apologetically.

Though he later finds a few moments to pull up a seat in the sunlight, he puts our talk on hold several times to jump through the doorway and peer into the slats of his Swedish-imported bread oven, even trotting out a blazing-hot loaf with his bare mitts for me to examine up close. "I've got baker's hands," he gleefully informs me, right before I can ask if he's on a first-name basis with the folks over at the burn center.

All things considered, Dolich looks and sounds like a lifer, a guy who's been elbow-deep in flour and water since he's been able to open his eyes. But the truth is that he was a trial lawyer for a decade before he even knew how to spell spelt — and the fervent cult following Four Worlds now enjoys began with a single e-mail between friends.

Dolich, who began practicing law in Lincoln in 1994, moved to Philly in 2002 on account of a woman. (That relationship has since ended.) His first exposure to baking came in 2003 during a summer retreat to Elat Chayyim in the Catskill Mountains of upstate New York. Study at the Kabbalah-focused Jewish spiritual center was free for him — so long as he took on a random task. His job: making bread for the entire community.

His supervisor didn't have time to school Dolich, so he learned on the fly, scooping out rudiments from The Joy of Cooking and cranking out as much product as he could — whole wheat, banana bread, "many botched attempts" at rye. It was here that he earned his "Challahman" nickname — a visiting musician tweaked the lyrics of "Day-O," replacing bananas with the Shabbat bread. And it was here that he first became fixated on the complex world of sourdough, creating his starter, the living admixture of yeast cultures that serves as the cornerstone of Four Worlds. But most prominently, it was here that a hobby became a vocation.

By the end of the summer, Dolich had developed a passion for the labor-intensive art form. He returned to Philly and resumed his lawyerly duties, concentrating on mediation and domestic abuse cases. But something wasn't sitting well. "I had an ambivalent relationship with my law practice," he says. "I could never figure out why it wasn’t working for me." His every thought hurtled back to bread. Dolich began tearing through baking lit and experimenting in his apartment with a tiny oven capable of cranking out two loaves at a time.

Like eager dough spilling out of a suddenly inadequate vessel, Dolich's fixation grew exponentially. He knew he had to get into a professional bakery, so he landed an entry-level position at Chestnut Hill's Baker Street Bread Co. in 2004. He was earning just $9 an hour, and his coworkers found it difficult to grasp why this pro litigator was treating a comparatively cash-cow career as an afterthought. But something just clicked — after a short period of double duty, he quit law altogether. Dolich later moved on to Le Bec-Fin's bakery in Wayne, crafting croissant under master baker Stephane Wojtowicz.

Both jobs helped Dolich refine his skills, but he says neither gig fully nurtured him. "It became clear early on that I was after a different kind of bread," he recalls. He was fond of the complex flavors locked within his naturally fermenting sourdough starter, and knew that the results he desired could be achieved only through experimenting with artisanal ingredients and freshly grinding small batches of grain into whole-wheat flour.

No one, in his view, was producing bread quite like this — especially large commercial outfits too focused on high output to pursue such craftsmanship. "They’re trying to speed up [the baking process]," says Dolich. “I was trying to slow it down.”

So Dolich, who'd moved into a cooperative off Baltimore Avenue, kicked off his own operation in November 2006. He sent out an e-mail to 20 people announcing he'd bake in his home kitchen every Friday. Customers could pre-order breads on the Web and pick them up on the co-op's front porch. He named the bakery Four Worlds, after the Kabbalistic precept that four worlds — physical, emotional, intellectual and spiritual — define human existence. "Baking bread has integrated those four worlds for me," says Dolich.

As is so often the case in West Philly, word of a good thing spread. The e-mail list exploded; Dolich soon established multiple pick-up sites for customers both in the city and in the suburbs. A roster of products that started off simply — challah, whole-wheat levain — grew to include bagels, chocolate babka, Alsatian beer bread, four kinds of croissants and more.

"It seemed to take on an energy of its own," says Dolich. Conscious customers took to his atypical business model; orchestrating bakes to match pre-determined demand meant that customers got stuff the same day it came out of the oven, with no bread wasted. Distribution costs were virtually nonexistent, as well, as Dolich tapped a network of likeminded individuals to offer their businesses and residences as pick-up sites. "I refused to use the distribution systems out there," he says. "So many people have their hands in it, taking a cut." And though raw ingredient costs have risen dramatically since Four Worlds’ inception, Dolich has never adjusted his prices — the relatively small output of his business means he can stay in the black without bowing to market fluctuations.

This mindfulness for individual impact manifests itself in Four Worlds' new HQ at Kaffa, which opened in August. The bakery produces virtually no waste; it runs on PECO wind power. Kaffa retails some of Dolich's products, but Web orders still comprise a majority of his business. Any excess bread he does produce is frozen fresh and offered to customers at a discount.

Two years have passed since the founding of Four Worlds, and Dolich admits he’s shocked that his business has grown so much in such a short period of time. "It's hard to explain how people and things come together to make something like this work," he says. But though success has changed the game, Dolich's spiritual connection to the dough remains. He still up at 2:30 a.m. for bakes, pausing for 20 minutes of silent reflection before slipping that day's croissant order into the proofer. "I channel all my life energy into the baking," he says. "I feel a sadness when I finish and go back to dealing with all of life's complications. [But] when I bake, I am full of joy."

(drew.lazor@citypaper.net)

Four Worlds Bakery, 4423 Chestnut St., 215-967-1458, fourworldsbakery.com.