Jason Raducha has taken his childhood love of baking to new heights as the owner and founder of Noble Bread and Noble Eatery (photo by Darryl Webb for North Central News).
It all started with an Easy-Bake Oven when Jason Raducha was six or seven years old.
“It’s a convoluted, crazy story,” said Raducha, owner and founder of Noble Bread and Noble Eatery, the source for baked goods on the menus of many of the Valley’s top-tier restaurants. “As a kid, I always loved to cook. I was always tinkering in the kitchen. Two of the best gifts I ever got were an Easy-Bake Oven when I was six or seven – it was the coolest thing for a kid – and in fourth or fifth grade, my aunt bought me a West Bend bread maker. We used it for pizza dough and made bread loaves with it.”
Growing up, Raducha followed his parents’ wishes and got a degree, in informational technology. But he never lost his fascination with what he calls “the crazy alchemy of flour and water and yeast having its own life,” and he kept on satisfying his itch for baking and cooking.
“One day I woke up and said, ‘We’re going to change some stuff.’” Raducha said. “I was working with a friend, doing some importing – meats and cheeses and other food items for restaurants. On the side I was still having fun baking.
“I started baking what I liked – a crispy crust, when you tear into the loaf it kind of shines back at you. The bread in the grocery store, you can’t tell if it’s crust or crumb. We want our bread to look dark. Our country breads are leavened with a sourdough starter, and what’s great about it is the darkness of it is a little bit bitter and it breaks up the sour that’s in the loaf.”
It was June 2012, and Raducha was nervous about taking a high dive into a whole new business, so he started crowdfunding on Kickstarter. “I only raised $20,000 over 30 days,” he said, “but the whole goal of it was, will people buy into what I wanted to do? I found people who did small investments – $5, $10, $20 – some gave $500.”
He built a barrel vault “black oven,” a 10,000-pound behemoth with 6- to 8-inch masonry walls. “You load it with wood once each day, let it burn, pull the coals out and in the residual heat you cook throughout a heat curve,” Raducha said.
The cooking starts with items that can handle the hottest temperatures, then items that need the lower temperatures as the oven cools.
“I did that outside my garage, on a trailer,” Raducha said. “I was doing it a couple days a week, selling to farmers markets. Then a few chefs approached me, asking me if I could do this for them.” Raducha took his breads to more chefs, asking if they’d like to feature his loaves on their menus.
“At the time it was really scary,” Raducha said. “I had my savings in this little business, and one of the board members of our HOA sent me a cease-and-desist letter, because somebody in the neighborhood did not like the smell of fresh baked bread. I started baking out of my parents’ garage. I’d make the dough, take it to their house, bake it and then take it to the farmers market.”
Later, an opportunity arose for small space inside the former Stanley’s Sausage site at McDowell and 20th Street. “It was a couple hundred bucks for 400 square feet, and I said ‘Where do I sign up?’ I rented the room, and it went from two days a week to six.”
Noble started with the country loaf, country grain, country seeded and fruit and nut breads. Then came semolina, “one of my personal favorites,” Raducha said, and then sandwich breads, hamburger buns, and a full pastry line including cookies, muffins and scones.
The bakery grew, filling the whole building and another one next door. The original one-man show, with Raducha baking, packaging and delivering the bread himself, rose to 200 employees. (Today, the black oven is stored at a friend’s cabin in Flagstaff.)
Raducha opened Noble Eatery at the McDowell site, selling individual loaves, sandwiches and other dishes to individual retail customers (the commercial bakery is closed to the public). He later moved Noble Eatery to 20th Street, just north of Campbell Avenue.
Retail customers also can find Noble products at farmers markets (a list is on the www.noblebread.com website) and 11 AJ’s in the Valley.
The Eatery is homey, with the original hand-painted sign, chalkboard menus and tables built by Raducha and his team from reclaimed wood. The menu is seasonal and most of the produce is organic. The menu changes weekly, with soups, salads and wood-fired pizzas.
On this day, the sandwich offerings include burrata and arugula with tomatoes and saba (concentrated grape syrup, similar to balsamic vinegar); salami, provolone and giardiniera with aioli; and meatballs with provolone and tomato sauce. Customers can order rolled lasagna Bolognese or baked ziti, with Caesar salad and a loaf of bread, enough to serve four, for $34. Shared plates include hummus, and charred Brussels sprouts with burrata and saba.
Raducha’s interests expand beyond recipe development and country loaves to protecting the environment and serving the community. At Noble Eatery, “all the stuff that we use is compostable,” he said. That includes straws, plates, bags – even the clear plastic-looking cups and lids. The plates are made from sugar cane pulp.”
Raducha also focuses on organizations that help children, including No Kid Hungry and Blue Watermelon. Right now, he’s developing recipes for new pastries and items for Phoenix Children’s Hospital’s February fund-raiser bake sale.
Noble Eatery, at 4525 N. 24th St., is open Monday through Friday, from 9 a.m. to 3 p.m. It’s a good idea to order multiple loaves in advance, especially during the holidays, or show up early because they sell out. For information, call 602-688-2424 or visit www.noblebread.com.
