CHARLOTTESVILLE, Va. (AP) - Edgar Lindamood makes his bread in a shop that stocks Nagant revolvers, Makarov pistols, 6.5mm Swedish, 7.7mm Japanese and 7.65mm Argentine ammunition.
No, seriously, the owner of Acme Arms on River Road in Charlottesville really does make bread in his gun shop. He doesn’t sell it, he just practices to perfect his recipe, making adjustments with each loaf to get it right.
Lindamood likes bread and he likes it his own way. Finding a bakery that does it his way is not as easy as making it himself. Nor is it as fun.
“I like my bread dense. I like it chewy with a certain robustness and I like to drown it in a lot of butter. I also like it a little saltier than most people and I like it with a little more sour,” he said, cutting a slice off a loaf baked that morning in a small oven in the back room of the shop. “It’s hard to find that in stores.”
Sometimes Lindamood tests his culinary experiments on his regular customers.
“I learned something making bread in a gun store and that’s that gun people will pretty much eat anything and tell you that it’s great,” Lindamood laughed. “I started out a few years ago making biscuits. I really like sourdough and I got a wild hair one day and just started working on recipes.”
Some customers are glad about that.
“I gave some to my 14-year-old daughter, Alexis, and she loved it so much she took it to a family party,” said Jeff Hernholm, a frequent visitor to Acme. “Now my family is fighting for Edgar’s bread.”
Lindamood and his business partner, Sharon Evans, go their own way with Acme Arms. Woodbrook Sports, an Albemarle County shop, caters to hunters and more traditional American handguns. Gander Mountain offers a bit of everything for everybody. Acme focuses on harder-to-find ammunition, military surplus rifles and guns from Eastern Europe and Russia.
Owning a small business is not easy. The hours are long, the paperwork is measured in reams and the finances are risky. To enjoy his baking hobby, Lindamood fits his bread and butter in between paperwork and customers.
“You don’t really own a small business, it owns you. I bought a little oven and started making the bread here because I spend about 70 hours a week in the shop and it’s easier to make it when I’m here than in the few hours when I’m home,” he said.
He starts the bread yeast, lets it rise, pounds it back down, lets it rest a day or two and then cranks the oven. It’s his way of combining business and pleasure.
“I do it because I like making things. I like to make my own beer, my own mead and my own bullets. It gives you a sense of self-reliance when you make your own stuff,” he said.
“There’s a pride in making your own things. There’s something satisfying about casting your own bullets, loading your own ammunition and seeing it work. It’s the same thing with bread.”
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Information from: The Daily Progress, https://www.dailyprogress.com
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