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About Street roots. (Portland, OR) 1998-current | View Entire Issue (Jan. 7, 2011)
4 street roots Jan. 7, 2011 A »S 'auirc.ffa, a » « w w w .naturebake.com S « ■ SBÏ S PH O TO BY JENNIFER JANSONS Above, Dave Dahl next to his signiture logo fo r Dave's Killer Bread. Below, one o f several o f D ahl’s mugshots from m any years past, featured in the book, “GoodSeed,” medication worked for me, and also going to “One thing you have a problem with when BREADMAKER, fro m page 1 school, but all of that wouldn’t have worked you’re in those shoes,” he says, “is that most fo r m A w i t b n n t m A m a lt in g a Hprim'nn that T’rl b ig g e r apartm ent complexes .are operated by beginning his sentence o f 115 m o n th s in had enough. And really, sometimes you make property management companies, and have prison for assault, delivery of a controlled that decision two or three times. Or maybe certain insurance and certain rules they go substance, and possession of a firearm. He 10 times, before you actually do i t So it’s not by. This person is a risk, and so their served more than seven years and was an easy thing to do.” insurance won’t allow it. Also if you’re a law- released early due to his completion of a In August of 2005, Dave and his nephew abiding citizen who has an apartment, you drug program. Shobi debuted Dave’s Killer Bread at may not really want an ex-con like an armed By December 2004, Dave had spent more Saturday Market in the Park Blocks in robber, a drug dealer, moving in next to you. than 15 years of his life incarcerated. But downtown Portland, and the response was It’s totally understandable that you kind of this last round of prison had been different. overwhelmingly positive. By the fall, Dave’s have to start at the bottom.” He’d learned computer-aided drafting and Killer Bread was available in grocery stores In addition to filling in for bakers and was good at i t The drug such as New Seasons, Peoples’ Coop, Food emptying bread loaf pans, Dave began to treatm ent program had Front and the Alberta Street Coop. Soon to experiment with mixing a new kind of bread. left him clean, and follow: Whole Foods and Fred Meyer, and Prison had given him plenty of time to reflect determined to stay that eventually Costco. Today, Dave’s bread is way. And he had decided on his upbringing in a bread-making now available in the northwest from Alaska business, and after 15 years of prison-issue to return to the family to California, as well as Idaho, Montana and v white-bread sandwiches, he longed for a bread-making business. Utah. heavier, grainier loaf. Out of this “This particular time arinthom’s introduction to Dave’s Killer experimentation came his “Blues” bread, a I had the humility and Bread came by way of her husband, who . delicious cornmeal-crusted loaf of bread that the acceptance, and the she says fell in love with the bread “in a very he says looked so beautiful that he hated to hope — I had all those extreme way.” Because she’d grown up on cut into it. This “Blues” loaf was the most things,” he says. “I knew Thailand’s rice-based diet, Varinthom wasn’t expensive sandwich bread Nature Bake had where I was, I knew accustomed to eating much bread, but she ever produced, but they knew it was where I’d been. I soon came around to share her husband’s something special. Dave’s brother Glenn accepted who I was at affection for the new brand. By now, she had encouraged him to call his invention “Dave’s the time.” lived in Delaware, Maryland, Massachusetts, Bread.” Meanwhile, Dave had grown attached He started working at and South Dakota, where she’d finished her to the title “Killer Bread,” but given his the bread store for $10 BFA in painting. Before moving to Portland, history, he wasn’t so sure using the phrase an hour, mixing loaves she lived in Alaska, where her practice “killer” in conjunction with his name was a and subbing for absent included creating giant sculptures and good idea. Eventually “Dave’s Killer Bread” bakers. Finding housing was born, and rather than hide his past, Dave paintings. On a walk one day, she saw up was difficult for Dave, close evidence of glaciers impacted by global told it on every bag of bread he sold. He considering his past crimes and his status as warming, and that day when she returned to gives a nod to his own past drug addiction, an ex-convict. “I lived with my mom at first,” and emphasizes a preservative-free loaf with her studio and saw the scale of what she was he says. “I wasn’t able to get actual housing making, she felt a little sick to her stomach the phrase “Just say NO to bread on drugs.” — or, my choice of housing, as you’d expect. at th e amount and size of the materials she He knows well the difficulty associated You think if you have a certain amount of was using. with kicking a drug habit money you can get a certain amount of “My epiphany was that I should do “It really comes down to, have you had housing. Well that’s not true with criminals, something more social, that other people can enough yet?,” Dave says. “For me, I don’t with ex-cons, if you have a criminal record. know what would have stopped me if it hadn’t relate to. If I was going to count in food miles Getting housing is very tricky. I was just when I ate, why couldn’t I make my work been for prison. I went to prison so many going to accept whatever housing I could get. environmentally friendly and sustainable times, and that last time I’d just had enough. Again, I was comparing it to prison. I was too?” I said you know w hat I can either die, or like, OK, you can’t throw me in any place Varinthorn applied to Portland State spend the rest of my life in prison.” Dave worse than I’ve already been. I’m still going University’s MFA program in Art and Social sometimes had dreams while incarcerated to be able to get up and walk outside and go Practice and began in 2007. The program that he had committed further, serious do what I want to do.” emphasizes the community component in art crimes that meant life in prison. He'd awaken About a year and a half ago, Dave making, and often means an artist works with his heart pounding, and then have a purchased his own home, and his worries rush of relief to realize he only had five more directly with a particular group of people, about securing housing for himself were over. such as elementary school students, local years of a sentence left. But the situation remains daunting for “These dreams made a big difference to countless other ex-cons being released from me,” he says. “Taking antidepressant SEE BREADMAKER, page 5 prison who need to find a place to stay. V PH O TO COURTESY OF VA R IN TH O R N ' CHRISTOPHER A N D DAVE DAHL. I I Dave's Killer Bread donates more than 75,000 loaves a year to local food charities, such as the Oregon Food Bank, Loaves and Fishes, Helping Hands.
