Senegalese Bread Baker: Mamadou Mbaye

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He brought his French breads from Senegal to Massachusetts. Ten years later, he is a local institution.

Mamadou Mbaye prepares loaves to be baked at Mamadou’s Artisan Bakery.
By Alison Arnett Globe correspondent January 17, 2017

WINCHESTER — Every morning Mamadou Mbaye rises long before dawn to start the baguettes. Each of the long, slender loaves must be shaped laboriously by hand, so that the interior is soft but the crust crackles with each bite.

For almost 10 years, Mbaye has been selling bread and French pastries here in his spare bakery, Mamadou’s Artisan Bakery; at many farmers’ markets; and elsewhere. His business has become an institution. He knows that the 50 to 100 baguettes he makes will be gone by the end of each morning, and that hundreds more loaves of French sourdough, multigrain, and other varieties will mostly be sold by nightfall.

He carries on a tradition of classic French baking honed over centuries. But in his case, it’s a tradition that traveled from France to his native Senegal and finally to Massachusetts.
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On a typical busy day, Mbaye says, he’ll bake 300 to 400 loaves, 500 on weekends — baguettes, multigrain, semolina cranberry fennel, Asiago and cheddar cheese, cranberry-pecan, French country sourdough, olive bread. “It’s a lot of work,” he says, lamenting that two workers left within the last year and he’s now baking by himself. And yet, he adds, “baking is the easy part” of the business.