His days begin at 2 a.m.

WASILLA — Baker Gary Young has heard all the cheesy one-liners — he’s rolling in dough, he’s too kneedy and he has nice buns.

To some degree, all are true, he said. Despite keeping vampire-like hours (the work day starts about 2 a.m.), the former kitchen designer for Spenard Builders Supply has turned his passion for pastry into a rewarding career.

“Yeah, we’re rolling in dough,” he joked, “and we encourage people to buy our bread because we kneed the dough.”

As baker and co-owner of North Star Bakery, Young is celebrating five years in business this week. He took a few minutes following the Monday morning rush to talk about being a baker.

Frontiersman: What kind of training did you need to be a good baker?

Young: I supposed you have to be curious. You need mathematics and a desire to learn. I didn’t have any formal training. I read a lot, think a lot and experiment, and have a desire to know. There are a lot of schools out there as well.

F: How long have you been a baker?

Y: Professionally, five years. Other than that, about 17 years. Back in the 1990s I became totally intrigued with baking and began studying it.

F: What about baking was so intriguing?

Y: I really had a desire to know what made good bread. I was reading all of these cookbooks. I wanted to know how to bake better, and it’s just a manipulation of time and material and heat. There’s so many things you can do.

F: How many different items do you bake at North Star?

Y: Oh, my gosh, probably in the hundreds. I like to think our most favorite item is our morning buns, which is a croissant pastry with icing; that and our ciabatta bread.

F: Remember that classic Dunkin Donuts commercial? When is it time for you to make the donuts?

Y: My day usually starts about 2 a.m. I tell you, this isn’t for the feint of heart. We do 16- and 18-hour days a lot of times. It’s a typical small business.

F: What did you do before you were a baker?

Y: I worked for Spenard for eight years. I designed kitchens. I would bake cookies and things there, and I used to joke that my training was at the “Spenard School.”

F: What are your favorite recipes?

Y: When (at Spenard), I would bring in habanero bagels. I’d know they were good if the heat made their glasses slide down their noses from the sweat. We do a lot of brioche and cinnamon rolls, fruit tarts in the summer when we have fresh fruit. We’ve started doing a lot of pies, also cakes. We’ve been doing a lot of wedding cakes, and a tremendous amount of cookies.

F: You said mathematics is part of baking. How so?

Y: It’s understanding ratios and percentages of ingredients so that you’re always manipulating different amounts of dough for orders. You have to be able to adjust your recipes so you don’t have a lot of waste. It all comes down baker’s math.

F: Some with sweet tooths may think you have the greatest job. Do you ever get tired of cookies and pies and cakes?

Y: You know, every now or then I’ll have a morning bun and I’m still amazed at how good they are, and I love our bread. But yeah, you can get kind of burned out on eating things. You still have to sample it all the time to see that the texture and flavor are there.

F: What advice do you have for people when shopping at a bakery?

Y: Never buy bread from a thin baker. They’ve got to eat their product. A lot of emphasis right now is on the importance of whole grains in your diet. As a consumer, that’s one of the things I would be interested in. Not just wheat, but rye and corn and oats and rice. All of your whole grains have minerals that vary. From a dietary standpoint, they’re really wonderful.

F: During the Thanksgiving and Christmas holidays, how many dinner rolls did you make?

Y: For Thanksgiving, we did 1,200 and we could’ve sold 1,800, and for Christmas I think we made 1,000. All of our dinner rolls have to be rolled by hand, so it’s a labor-intensive process.

F: On a typical day, how many pounds of dough will you go through?

Y: Gosh, today we did 110 loaves of bread at a pound and a half a loaf. Then we did three blocks of cinnamon rolls that are 15 pounds, then four or five blocks of croissant dough, which is about 35 pounds. … I think we’re up to a couple hundred pounds of flour a day is what we average.

F: Where do you find your inspiration and, if you’ll pardon the pun, do you ever feel burnt out?

Y: I suppose the person who has been the most helpful to me is Peter Reinhart. He did a series of books I ran across about 15 years ago. They started a lot like us here. And no, I’m constantly interested in the process and in running a business.

F: What’s something people wouldn’t know about being a baker?

Y: I think there’s a quote from a lady (I can’t recall her name) that I’ve always kept in the back of my mind. She said when she finishes her 200 loaves each day, she credits her “endless desire or curiosity” about bread and what goes on in that mix of flour, water, salt, wild yeast or commercial yeast. I think most bakers are driven by a constant curiosity of trying to understand the process.

Contact Greg Johnson at greg.johnson@frontiersman.com or 352-2269.