Polly Makes a Graham Cracker

When she thought that her tenure at Teaism had run its course, Brown struck out on her own and went into the catering business. She quickly grew weary of catering’s physical demands and its limitations on her culinary creativity. But it wasn’t until an evening when she ate a mass-produced graham cracker with a glass of sauvignon blanc that her catering business began to morph into a wholesale baking business.

“I thought, ‘Either I’m a huge drunk, or these go really well together,” Brown recalled. “I just ate them and it was a match made in heaven.”

After her pairing epiphany, Brown resolved to fill a niche that hadn’t yet been filled – making and selling artisanal graham crackers, among other baked goods. She also resolved to make products that tasted exceptionally good and that had a long shelf-life – something that would wouldn’t go bad quickly in the store or in a customer’s cupboard.

“I didn’t want the market to be kids,” Brown said. “How often do you go into Starbucks and buy a cookie? It’s a lifetime commitment in terms of calories. I wanted to make something where you don’t feel like taking a nap on the couch when you’re done.”

And indeed, Brown’s graham crackers – which resemble a crisp wafer more than they do a run-of-the-mill graham cracker – are not overly sweet. Rather than using molasses as Trader Joe’s does in its graham crackers, Brown uses local honey from the Toigo Orchards in Shippensburg, Pennsylvania as her sweetening agent. The consistency and the moderate sweetness level are the very reasons why Alexandria’s Cheesetique has, on occasion, replaced water crackers with Brown’s graham crackers on its prepared blue cheese plates.

Before long, Brown – a former lobbyist and a former legislative assistant to presidential candidate John Anderson – expanded into other products, such as chocolate, cinnamon, and ginger shortbreads.

“What makes shortbread great is its simplicity,” Brown said. “It’s just butter, sugar, flour, and flavoring.”

What’s more, Brown’s shortbread is preservative-free and lasts for two months in the package – a lifespan that owes itself to the fact that shortbread dough doesn’t have to be refrigerated.

Brown officially started POLLYstyle out of her Northwest Washington home in August 2004. Although she used a commercial kitchen in Silver Spring to turn out her graham crackers, she recently had to give up the space – a concession that has forced her to put her graham cracker-baking on hiatus at least until early 2006, by which point she hopes to have lined up use of another commercial kitchen.

In the meantime, Brown continues to manufacture her shortbread, which has earned her several accolades. Not only did she make a personal delivery of her shortbread to O’Connor about a month ago (Brown met O'Connor at a function for Brown's daughter last spring), the D.C. Convention and Tourism Corporation highlighted her shortbreads at its press conference in October announcing their “American Originals” campaign.

Perhaps more telling, an increasing number of small businesses have picked up her product line. “I’ve been very lucky,” Brown said. “I’ve just walked into small businesses and said, ‘Try this product.’”

And they have. Both Teaism and Cheesetique sell her wares, as do Georgetown’s Dean and Deluca, Gillian Clark’s daSto, Alexandria’s Kingsbury Chocolates (which offers Brown’s shortbread drizzled in chocolate), Arlington’s Best Cellars, and Spring Valley’s historic Wagshal’s Delicatessen. Clark’s Colorado Kitchen has combined Brown’s graham crackers with Scharffenberger chocolate and homemade marshmallows for a high-end S’mores menu item.

Brown currently doesn’t want her own storefront because she believes that a bakery can’t be profitable in Washington, but she does hope to increase her wholesale sales, hire some help, and start selling her graham crackers and shortbread via the Internet.

In the meantime, buy Brown’s shortbread (and soon, again, her graham crackers) when you find them. She’s only one woman – which means that her supply is limited to what she can make. And you don’t want O’Connor to hog all the good stuff.