For the Love of Mom

One couple’s passion leads to bread-making. A young cook discovers life lessons in his grandmother’s restaurant. In this three-part series, Hawaii’s kitchens turn out stories of faith, sacrifice and enduring love across the islands and generations.

Sometimes it's hard to make a baby.

When Dawn Miura was pregnant, husband Chris came home early every day to make dinner. But "I was so sick," Dawn says, "that I'd get out of the car, smell the rice cooking and start throwing up."

Lucky for her, she'd married an ob-gyn with an obsessive streak. When they were in medical school, Chris announced he was going diving and asked what she'd like. "Lobster would be nice," Dawn joked, and forgot about it until she arrived at his apartment that evening and found two freshly caught, perfectly prepared lobsters. Even one, she knew, would have been a rare catch.

She was still gushing when she told her mom. "Marry him," her mother ordered.

Now her personal obstetrician would give her queasy pregnancy no less attention. But though Chris tried every anti-nausea drug on the market, prescription and over-the-counter, Dawn continued to lose weight. Then someone told him about an old Jewish remedy for morning sickness: freshly baked bread. He bought some Fleischmann's yeast and baked Jewish challah from the recipe on the back of the packet.

Wonder of wonders, the bread stayed down. A relieved Chris baked bread every day of that pregnancy. Finding that it was about the only thing she could keep down, Dawn never tired of it. She much preferred it to rice.

By their second pregnancy he was getting pretty good and began to expand beyond challah. As he juggled fatherhood and a full-time practice, the seeds of a new obsession were being sown. "Bread is kind of an art and a science at the same time," Chris says. "It intrigued me—the sourdoughs, the natural cultures, the fermentation."

SYT asked what he meant by "intrigued."

CM:  I read most of the bread-baking books on the market. I went up to Napa and saw some organic bakers and their brick ovens, and I decided to build my own. I read "The Bread Builders: Hearth Loaves and Masonry Ovens" by Dan Wing and Alan Scott and I've actually talked to Alan, the master builder of brick ovens in the United States.

SYT:  You built a brick oven yourself?

CM:  Yeah, I read a book on carpentry and masonry. There was a website on Yahoo! on brick ovens, and I talked to a bunch of people.

SYT:  You don't have to get a permit or something to—


CM: I called the city permitting department and they hadn't actually had any requests like this before. They basically told me that as long as it's a wood-fired oven and it doesn't exist under the umbrella of the household structure—which it didn't, it's sitting in my backyard—there was no real ordinance for it. They said, "Ah! Build 'em!" So I did.

With Dawn’s support, Chris signed up for baking classes. While the kids were sleeping he slipped out of the house to interview bakers at their predawn craft. By the time their second child was a toddler, Chris was shoveling dough in and out of his backyard oven in sequence as cooking temperatures dictated: pizza first, then breads, pies, cobblers. One of his proudest moments was when little Melissa spat out a bite of store-bought white bread at a preschool birthday party.

"Daddy, the bread tastes yucky," she said.

"Good girl!" he said.

In 2006 he teamed with baking expert Murray Holt to open Mauna Kea Baking Co. in Kalihi. Five to six days a week, Chris tends his ob-gyn practice, and on weekends he bakes. He and Holt turn out a range of artisan breads baked fresh daily, from roasted garlic sourdoughs to baguettes to lavosh. Most of the loaves are wholesaled to Foodland and Costco, but first and third Saturdays of every month find him selling his bread at the Saturday Farmers' Market at Kapiolani Community College.

SYT got Dawn's version of the story.

SYT:  You didn't worry a little bit when your husband started building that oven in your backyard?

DM:  No, it's a good, creative outlet. Baking, particularly artisan breads, you can learn, but like any other art form, you just have to have that little extra something, and he has it.

SYT:  How do you feel about the baking now?

DM:  I always laugh. One of my jokes is I guess I'm getting off pretty easily if this is a midlife crisis. And I tease him, "You know, if you wanted a second career, you could have picked one that had better hours."

SYT:  Does bread symbolize anything in your marriage?

DM:  Even when we were dating, food was a real focus for us, so it continues to be a natural extension of our relationship and in particular, his skill. Other than that, there are way too many bad puns about what a gynecologist and a baker have in common!