Creative Loafing

Siblings Evrim and Evin Dogu know there are easier ways to bake bread. But for the co-owners of Richmond’s Sub Rosa Bakery, using regionally grown grains and baking in a wood-fired masonry oven aren’t negotiable. Not when the resulting smoke-kissed are so remarkable. Not even when a fire nearly destroyed their bakery in 2013. They rebuilt, determined to keep sharing their love of old-world flavors, and now, seven years in, Sub Rosa has become a River City staple. But the Dogus—children of Turkish immigrants, they were born in Baton Rouge and spent their formative years in Northern Virginia, where their father operated a restaurant—want their breads to help change the way people eat. Last October, Evrim helped form the Common Grain Alliance, a nonprofit that links mid-Atlantic farmers, millers, and bakers with the aim of advancing the South’s sustainable food movement and putting more whole grains on the region’s tables.