Visit Orange Peel Bakery for all-you-can-eat pizza and music every Wednesday
by Kendra Mills
Orange Peel bakery boasts a fine selection of baked goods and breads—including the festive Olive Ciabatta and sandwich-ready Whole Wheat Five Grain—which may be purchased at the bakery’s location in Aquinnah or at Cronig’s Market. However, the most popular component of Orange Peel bakery is the Wednesday pizza night, in which the extended island community is invited together to share food and conversation. The food is served outside, encouraging the guests to mingle. The pizza night is only ten dollars for essentially all you can eat—the only other requirement being that guests bring a topping to share with the community.
Business owner and primary baker, Juli Vanderhoop, spoke with This Week on MV about the evolution of the bakery and inspiration behind her pizza nights. Juli maintains that she never intended to run a bakery business; it was suggested by a friend who noticed how people congregated at her house and looked at her counter to see what she had baked during that day. Juli’s breads each have a backstory, for example, the ‘threshing buns’ are small, compact rolls which stay together once made into sandwiches. The durable rolls were originally given to farmers to keep in their pockets for lunch. The breads baked at Orange Peel were decided by consensus, as they were offered as samples and the favorites were chosen as permanent menu fixtures.
The pizza nights, which emerged from the weekly bread samplings, are intentionally imitative of the European meal model, where guests come to eat and don’t leave for many hours.
Melanie Sroka-Chaunce of Earth Tribe Music provided musical accompaniment, along with her husband and several other guest performers. Melanie has been performing at pizza nights for two years, sometimes using amplifiers on the stage, other times strumming acoustic guitar with smaller gatherings. An attendant of the pizza night, overhearing the conversation between Juli and myself, interjected, saying that they were “such a gift to island.”
Juli spoke about her desire to establish a place of community, creativity, and generosity in Aquinnah and it must be said—from observations of a single pizza night—that Orange Peel Bakery is an overwhelming success.
