Designing an Institution

What England's artisan food schools taught us about preserving craft while expanding education

Last week I wrote about a deceptively simple question that Anomarel "Ano" Ogen, Executive Head Baker and Baking Strategy Director at GAIL's Bakery, asked me during our visit to England:

At what point does craft become industry?

At first, I thought he was asking about bread. By the end of the trip, I realized he wasn't.

That question followed me everywhere. It stayed with me as we toured bakeries, walked through classrooms, and spoke with some of the world's most accomplished artisan bakers and educators. Somewhere along the way I realized something I hadn't expected.

The hardest thing to scale isn't bread.

It's education!

Regardless of how old they are ;-)

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As Christina and I continue planning the next chapter of the Modern Stone Age Food Lab, we weren't traveling simply to admire beautiful facilities or collect ideas about equipment. We were trying to answer a much deeper question:

How do you teach more people without losing the very thing worth teaching?

That question has become one of the guiding principles behind everything we're building.

Standing in the same spot from 2008 in July 2026

Returning to the School of Artisan Food on the Welbeck Estate was especially meaningful for me. Years ago, this is where I first trained in sourdough under master baker Wayne Caddy in 2008. Standing once again at the same bench where I learned brought back incredible memories, but this visit felt entirely different. I wasn't there simply as a student. I was there as someone trying to understand how great institutions are built.

Christina and I spent the afternoon with Ellie-Mae Barbieri studying everything from classroom design and workflow to equipment selection and educational philosophy. What struck me most wasn't the beauty of the facilities. It was the realization that one of the world's premier artisan food schools had already wrestled with many of the same questions we're asking ourselves.

Students absolutely learn foundational hand skills. They mix dough, shape loaves, and develop an understanding of how food responds to their touch. But they also learn to use professional equipment where appropriate. Pastry students don't laminate every dough by hand. They learn to use sheeting machines because those tools improve consistency while allowing instructors to spend more time teaching technique, dough behavior, and decision-making rather than repetitive physical labor.

The goal isn't to replace craftsmanship.

The goal is to use technology where it strengthens the educational experience without compromising the craft itself.

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Sourdough Slingers

That lesson became even clearer when we visited Wayne at his own school, Sourdough Slingers. Wayne has spent nearly four decades baking at every level of the profession, from artisan bakeries to large-scale commercial production, yet his passion for naturally fermented bread remains unchanged.

As I watched him teach, I noticed something I probably would have overlooked years ago. His bakery was filled with professional equipment—deck ovens, spiral mixers, proofers—but the machines weren't the focus of the class. Wayne wasn't teaching students how to operate equipment. He was teaching them how to understand fermentation, work with wild yeast and bacteria, read dough, and make good decisions. The machines simply created the opportunity to spend more time teaching what actually mattered.

Suddenly Ano's question came back once again.

Maybe the machines had never been the point.

That realization may have been the most important lesson Christina and I brought home.

As we continue growing the Modern Stone Age Food Lab into a larger and more accessible space, we're not simply designing classrooms or choosing equipment. We're deciding what kind of institution we want to become.

The School of Artisan Food and Sourdough Slingers were invaluable sources of inspiration, but they are only part of the picture. For years we've admired other remarkable models, including Ballymaloe Cookery School in Ireland, the Artisan Culinary School in Altea, Spain, and the Italian Culinary Institute in Italy. Each has developed its own approach to preserving culinary traditions while educating future generations of cooks, artisans, and food leaders.

Our goal isn't to copy any one of them.

It's to learn from all of them while creating something uniquely our own.

We're working toward a full-fledged cooking school dedicated to the traditional food-processing technologies that have nourished humans for millions of years. At the same time, we're determined that growth will never come at the expense of the student experience. Whether it's a four-year-old rolling sourdough pretzels alongside a parent, someone fermenting cabbage for the very first time, or an adult learning how to butcher a pig, every student deserves an experience that is deeply personal, hands-on, and transformational.

That's why we're investing so much time researching, traveling, asking questions, and learning from institutions that have spent decades refining their approach. Not because we want to become them, but because we want to understand what they've learned so we can remain true to our own mission, values, and community.

That philosophy has already begun shaping the way we teach.

About a year ago, Christina and I launched The Ancestral Table, an online community built around the very question we've been wrestling with throughout this journey: How do you make meaningful education accessible to more people without compromising its quality?

Bill and Christina teaching how to make healthy mayonnaise without any refined oils

Every week we gather online for a live cooking class that is professionally filmed by Shane Brill and later edited into an ever-growing educational library that members can access whenever they choose. Each class is followed by an open question-and-answer session, and throughout the week our members continue learning together by sharing recipes, photos, questions, successes, and resources.

Will an online class ever replace standing beside someone while they knead dough, stretch mozzarella, ferment vegetables, or butcher a pig?

Of course not.

Some lessons simply have to be experienced in person.

But we've discovered that thoughtfully using technology allows us to reach people who otherwise could never travel to Maryland while still creating a genuine learning community. Just like the sheeting machine in a pastry kitchen, the technology isn't the lesson. It simply helps us share the lesson with more people.

As I reflected on our week in England, I realized that the bakeries and the schools weren't teaching different lessons at all. They were teaching the same lesson in different ways. Whether you're baking bread or educating students, growth doesn't have to come at the expense of craftsmanship. But it does require intentionality.

It requires identifying the values that matter most and refusing to compromise them.

That's exactly what Christina and I hope to build. Not simply a larger Food Lab.

An institution where students learn with their heads, their hands, and their hearts. A place where fermentation is understood rather than memorized, where cheesemaking teaches biology and chemistry, where butchery teaches respect, and where baking teaches patience. A place where every class connects people more deeply to their past, their food, their health, their communities, and the natural world.

As we continue expanding both the Modern Stone Age Kitchen and the Modern Stone Age Food Lab, one idea will guide every decision we make. We aren't trying to build a bigger bakery or simply a bigger school. We're trying to build a better institution, one that remains deeply personal as it grows, where every student still feels seen, every class still tells a story, and every technique strengthens the connection between people, food, and the living world.

Toasting to what we learned and what we want to build back in Chestertown - thank you, England for the inspiration!

That won't happen accidentally. It will happen only if we continue asking ourselves the same question Ano asked me in England.

Not, "At what point does craft become industry?"

But rather,

"What are we unwilling to compromise?"

For Christina and me, the answer is simple.

We will never compromise our mission. We will never compromise the integrity of the food we prepare. And we will never compromise the educational experience of the people who place their trust in us.

If we can remain faithful to those principles while making this knowledge available to more people than ever before, then perhaps we'll have accomplished exactly what we set out to do - not simply to build a cooking school, but to build an institution that helps people rediscover one of humanity's oldest truths:

Food has the power to nourish not only our bodies, but our families, our communities, and our future!!