To Cincinnatians who consume carbohydrates, it’s no secret that Sixteen Bricks creates some of the city’s best bread. You may have had the chance to grace your gullet with some of baker Ryan Morgan’s damn fine grain creations at local restaurants including Branch in East Walnut Hills, Goose & Elder in Findlay Market, Red Feather in Oakley or at any one of Jeff Ruby’s establishments.
And now Morgan’s baking prowess is getting a national nod from Esquire magazine. Esquire Food & Drinks editor Jeff Gordinier has heaped praise upon Morgan in a feature printed in the March issue titled “Baking Bad.”
Gordinier writes:
When I think about the American food revolution of the past two decades, I think about people like Ryan Morgan. Morgan, 44, spent the early portion of his wage-earning years working as a mechanic. You can tell. Stocky, solid, salt-and-pepper-haired, and the furthest thing from a hipster, Morgan talks with a kind of no-bullshit midwestern gruffness that’s common in the city where he lives, which is Cincinnati. He happens to bake some of the best bread and pastries I’ve ever tasted, but you won’t catch him being precious about it. Ask and he’ll tell you that the whole thing was an accident.
According to a release, it was in 2011 when Morgan decided to take over a bakery his family owned so his mother could take care of his father, who was suffering from multiple sclerosis. In Esquire, he called the bread being sold at the bakery at the time “maybe the worst fucking bread” he’d ever seen in his life, so he fixed some machinery, bought a new mixer and began experimenting with whole-milled, ancient grains.
“I’m constantly experimenting,” Morgan says in the release. “I want to push myself, try new things, see how different ingredients interact. It doesn’t turn out perfect every time, but that’s how we learn, that’s how we’re Sixteen Bricks better — one loaf at a time.”
And now those loaves are being called some of the best in nation.
Learn more about Sixteen Bricks and where to find their bread at sixteenbricks.com.
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This article appears in Feb 5-18, 2020.