Due This Fall: Dough Baby in Hamilton
Written by Diane Helentjaris | Photos by Gracie Savage
Tara Jensen has led a life of hot ovens, heady aromas, and crusty, heat-burnished loaves. Growing up in Maine, she had planned to spend her time with easels and paintbrushes. Then she went off to study at the College of the Atlantic and met a group of “cool” women bakers in Bar Harbor. She decided she would “do whatever I have to do here” to participate in “such an empowering atmosphere as a young woman.” That Bar Harbor bakery was just the beginning. Jensen went on to earn her living baking for the next 25 years. She says her “artwork merged into baking” as she developed her own distinctive style. “The bread became a way of expressing myself.”
She baked her way around the country, traveling the United States from New England to the West Coast. By 2013, she was operating her own one-person artisan bakery, Smoke Signals, in tiny Marshall, North Carolina. Using a wood-fired brick oven and freshly milled grains, she turned out naturally leavened breads and swoon-worthy pies with work-of-art crusts. Pilgrims trekked to her biweekly workshops and her monthly pizza nights. They came from the nearby hills, driving anywhere from 16 miles from Asheville or four hours from Georgia.
In 2016, a “big spread,” as she describes it, in Bon Appétit magazine pumped up her visibility. It reported, along with a vivid description of her solitary baker’s life, that a film producer had brought “bread god Chad Robertson from San Francisco’s Tartine Bakery out to visit.” Tara Jensen was on the map.
Today, over 100,000 fans follow her @bakerhands Instagram account. Her first book, “A Baker’s Year: Twelve Months of Baking and Living the Simple Life at the Smoke Signals Bakery,” was published in 2018. The book combines her recipes with photographs and drawings along with a memoir-like recounting of her simple, thoughtful life in the mountains. The Washington Post deemed her second book, “Flour Power: The Practice and Pursuit of Baking Sourdough Bread,” as one of the 10 best cookbooks of the year. Her third book will be released by Chronicle Books this spring.
Her baking captures an authentic, rustic, and artisan feel. She is tuned in to the wide world of grains and all its possibilities. Barley, spelt, buckwheat, and corn join wheat flour in her lexicon. Like a wine connoisseur, she rhapsodizes about the terroir of various flours and the way grain reflects its land and climate. She is a member of the Common Grain Alliance, a mid-Atlantic partnership of artisan bakers, millers, and grain farmers. The group works to integrate and strengthen the regional grain economy through education and partnerships. She’s also listed in the cast of the 2014 film “The Grain Divide,” a documentary that tells the history of grains while asking poignant questions about their future.
These days Tara Jensen calls Hamilton, Virginia, home. The small town is about the same size as Marshall, North Carolina, and more importantly, it’s her husband’s hometown. Like anyone who goes to Hamilton, she could not miss the Hamilton Mercantile on East Colonial Highway. Touted as “Northern Virginia’s oldest health food store,” the shop is chock-full of local farm and artisan goodies — from heirloom tomatoes to Parsonage handmade soaps. Jensen did a few pop-ups there and became friends with owners Meredith Brown and Abbie Whitehurst.
Jensen found “people talked about wanting a baker, needing a bakery.” Brown, Jensen, and Whitehurst decided to join forces and make that dream a reality. They are, as Jensen says, “really committed to doing something unique in our community — not generic, not commercial,” that “speaks to the community wanting a more personal flavor.”
Dough Baby, a take-out restaurant set to open this autumn with Jensen as head baker, is the result. The trio purchased a building tucked behind the Hamilton Post Office next to Hamilton Park. Jensen has three daughters, including toddler twins, and Brown and Whitehurst also have young children. The site is particularly appealing as the park is a favorite walking destination for families with children. Dough Baby will have a walk-up window. Jensen believes it will be a convenient way to offer something delicious and good for the kids — all while creating special life moments.
The planned menu will include pizza, wine, coffee, and soft-serve ice cream. The pizza, made from regionally milled grains, will be topped with Dough Baby-made tomato sauce and cheese. Pepperoni and seasonal toppings will be offered. On the weekends, Dough Baby will serve up breakfast biscuits and light pastries. Home bakers will also be able to purchase sourdough starter, baking tools, and a selection of flours.
The building is being fully built out with an open kitchen format, so customers can see their food being created. Transforming the structure, built as a deli and ice cream shop in 1998, into Dough Baby has required upgrades in electricity and structural adaptations to handle the ovens. In late June, a Kickstarter campaign to raise the final funds for these upgrades began. Within days, Dough Baby reached its halfway mark.
For those who believe every town deserves a bakery, this autumn Hamilton will meet their expectations. ML
Visit hamiltondoughbaby.com for more information and updates about the business.
Published in the August 2025 issue of Middleburg Life.