After 28 years abroad, Jim gladly returned to Vermont taking his experience and passion for wood-fired baking to give the former Union Co-operative bakery, today known as Rise Up Bakery, a new lease on life. He brings a diverse assortment of European and in-house sourdough bread formulas that he baked in Ukraine, and together with Larissa, he offers the people of Barre and outlying townships good honest nutrition with a European accent.
Jim Haas spent his childhood and youth in Danby, Vermont (Rutland County). Shortly after finishing college, Jim moved to Ukraine in 1991 where he worked for several years in corporate finance on behalf of three Western investors in Ukraine’s food and agriculture sectors. Jim comes from a very food- and nutrition-conscious family, so the decision that he took in 2006 together with his wife, Larissa, to launch Ukraine’s first commercial wood-fired artisanal bakery was very much a conscious decision to return to the values and roots of his youth.