A couple weeks ago, I focused my quarterly doughnut roundup on fall favorites, specifically apple cider doughnuts. The only places that make them at this moment are Too Sweet Cakes and Sisters Bakery. Or so I thought, until a reader mercifully informed me that Big Ed’s Artisan Breads makes this autumnal delicacy (available only late September through January). They’re small. Simple. And at only a buck a piece (get a dozen and that 12th one’s free), they’re a new personal favorite. In fact, had I but known to include them in the roundup where all the other judges taste test them blind, I’m somewhat confident Big Ed’s would’ve won. The only problem is that I go around to every doughnut shop early the Saturday morning of the blind taste-test to ensure maximum freshness, but Big Ed’s isn’t open weekends, when I imagine those of us who do doughnut runs do them. What’s more, if you don’t make it into their retail store built into their large-scale wholesale bakery before 1 o’clock, you’re fresh outta luck.
“We’re Central Oregon’s best kept secret,” says Seth Chilcutt, who some folks call Little Ed on account of being Ed “Big Ed” Chilcutt’s son. Mrs. Ed, as it were, Merri Chilcutt, also runs what is truly a family business with a total of around 25 employees from bakers to bread shapers to packagers to deliverers.
Big Ed himself personally takes almost every wholesale order from their scores of customers — over 150 are listed on their website — ranging from the largest restaurants to the smallest food trucks throughout Central Oregon. Whether you’ve been to the bakery or not, whether you’ve had the Hideaway Tavern or the Victorian’s famous benedicts, or a burger at Bend Burger Co., or nearly any meal betwixt a bun or bread from Alley Dogz to Zydeco Kitchen, from the Big Foot Tavern down in Crescent to the VFW Hall up in Redmond, “If you’ve lived here for any amount of time you’ve likely had our goods and possibly not known it,” says Seth Chilcutt.
Big Ed himself is a classically trained chef who got his start working as a chef on a private yacht at age 18, moving the family from Seattle to Bend to open Anthony’s at the Old Mill in 2004. The senior Chilcutt eventually found himself at Di Lusso Bakery until it closed. That’s how Big Ed’s Artisan Breads grew into a glutenous institution since 2013. Seth was just 13 at that time and moved back to Bend last year to help run the family biz.
Thanksgiving and Christmas are extra busy thanks in part to Big Ed’s popular pies that are only available over the retail counter. Customers can start ordering pumpkin pies as well as Dutch apple or marionberry pies in large or small sizes. There’s a chocolate-bourbon-pecan pie that’s family sized and a cherry pie that’s, um, individual sized if you love cherry pie as much as I do. What’s more, Big Ed’s is now rolling out its cranberry-gouda rolls that have become a Thanksgiving staple.
“Pastry is a lot of labor for a small (portion of our sales),” says Seth Chilcutt. He says they sell just under 2,000 during these two months. The company’s space has multiple commercial ovens and several walk-in cold storage units because their various sourdough loaves, hoagie rolls, potato buns, English muffins and, increasingly, pizza doughs, are, of course, the bread-and-butter of the bakery.
On a good day, Big Ed’s bakes some 6,000 pieces of bread a day. The various shapes of baking pans are stacked in many corners. They go through an estimated 10,000 pounds of flour per week.
By comparison, very little of that flour winds up in the apple cider doughnuts. This marks its third year making the morsels that are simply cake batter with Washington apple cider as the sole liquid, fried and tossed in cinnamon sugar. It’s presently the only time of year Big Ed’s brings out the fryer, but the Chilcutts are mulling the idea of offering a seasonal doughnut — and I’m here to remind them that rhubarb season is coming up. As is peach season, and it’s always filbert season.
Editor’s note: Two details have been changed in the third paragraph. The print edition stated Big Ed’s supplies buns to Mountain Burger. That was incorrect, so we changed the reference to “Bend Burger Co.” And Big Foot Tavern was listed as being in Sunriver in the print edition; it is in Crescent. We regret the errors.
This article appears in Source Weekly November 7, 2024.
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