In a famous scene from “It’s a Wonderful Life,” George and Mary Bailey present three housewarming gifts to the Martinis consisting of: “Bread – that this house may never know hunger; Salt – that life may always have flavor; and Wine – that joy and prosperity may reign forever.” Black Diamond’s local bakery has been baking bread leavened with salt for as long as wine’s been made by the town’s Italian coal miners. This photo for a Dec. 18, 1976 Seattle Times article shows Wallace Smith, left with son Doug and daughter Sandra removing loaves from the brick oven that made the Black Diamond Bakery famous. The brick ovens were built by Willard (Bill) Hadley in 1902.
In 1976, the bakery was producing 500 loaves of bread a day. The complicated process took 24 hours as meticulously described by Wallace Smith. At noon each day, the oven was fired with a half cord of wood then allowed to burn for eight hours until temperatures reached 1,500º. The oven was allowed to cool for 10 hours to 500º with the remaining six hours used for baking. Smith explained how ‘the old recipes’ were used, consisting of all natural ingredients – no chemicals or preservatives – with sugar replaced by honey. Smith also lamented the high cost of that style of bread-making, wondering how much longer he could compete with large commercial bakeries. In 1985, Smith sold the bakery to Doug Weiding who expanded the historic building’s footprint by constructing wings on each side. One side housed a restaurant while the other boasted a large coffee shop and meeting area for the bus loads of tourists who stopped to sample fresh baked treats and bread from the four-foot thick ovens. This Larry Dion photo comes courtesy of JoAnne Matsumura, an Issaquah historian.
