Business
Doctor makes dough teaching bread baking
■ This Vermont physician doesn't loaf. He's a writer, too.
By Tyler Chin — Posted June 14, 2004
Making sidelines pay
Doctors who branched out beyond running their practice tell why they did it, how they did it, and what you should know before you do it.
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Name: Daniel C. Wing, MD
Specialty: Physical and rehabilitation medicine
Location: Windsor, Vt.
Business: Writes and teaches about baking bread and building masonry ovens
Annual revenue: $5,000
Why he started the business: "It wasn't really that I got an idea. I grew up partly in a small town in Maine where most people did bake and where people made their own butter. I also lived in Brazil when I was a child where fresh bread was delivered to our doorstep every morning. So I was used to having excellent bread growing up."
Aware of the difference between white bread and breads he had eaten in Europe, "I began to find out what it takes to make that European-style bread," he said. "You have to bake in a certain way, and the easiest way to do that is to have a masonry oven. Once I was able to make the kind of bread I like to eat I realized that very few people in the United States, especially 10 years ago, knew how to do that."
So he and a friend who designs masonry ovens, Alan Scott, co-wrote The Bread Builders: Hearth Loaves and Masonry Ovens. "If you write a book, you start with a book tour and then book signings." When he was signing books at baking education centers, some of the centers asked him to teach a class, and thus his sideline gig began.
Why he keeps practicing: "My family and I feel I can give back something practicing medicine that I can't in teaching people about baking."
Words of wisdom: "Follow your interests."
