Man can live on quality bread alone

Clues about our real passions and life purposes abound everywhere when we are young. I have discovered this during the second half of life almost daily by tying personal memories to current happenstance. After making friends with local bread baker David Tannen, I remembered my senior year in high school buying a cookbook entitled, “Beard On Bread” by the obvious master James Beard.

I was struck then as I am now by the following lines in his introduction, “Good bread is the most fundamentally satisfying of all food; and good bread with fresh butter (or local honey), the greatest of feasts. However, unless we bake it ourselves, it is hard to come by a loaf of bread these days delicious enough to stir the senses. We are offered spongy, plasticized, tasteless breads, presliced, doctored with nutrients and preservatives and with about as much gastronomic importance as cotton wool. Yet people everywhere seem to go on buying bread no matter how poor its quality, simply because it is unthinkable to live without it. But there is no excuse for putting up with bad bread, particularly when a loaf prepared by hand is so little trouble particularly if you know David.

Happy trails to me and my delightful friend Connie Hardin as we set off last week on a crisp, clear and brilliantly colored fall day — destination Old Natchez Trace Road (off Highway 7, north of Columbia) and David Tannen’s home Twin Forks Farm. Though David sells his menu of artisan loaves at the Nashville Farmer’s Market on Wednesday, Franklin Farmers Market on Saturday, The Produce Place in Nashville and The Loveless Cafe, I wanted the full experience and the secret to his genuinely happy disposition at market.

Sean York will one day recall bread baking with his grandfather David. He began as a baker just this past May, and I was lucky enough to discover him and have been buying this deliciousness on a weekly basis since that time. As connoisseurs of farmers’ markets my husband, Dalton and I have a radar for that certain vendor — those would be the folks with the slowed down, even tempered dispositions who love their product and enjoy the education component of the market as much as the production piece. We spied David, hands in his pockets with a boyish grin on his face and his simply stacked table, loaded with rustic European-style loaves.

“Now this is what I’m talking about,” I say to Dalton as this type of bread is a rare find in our southern markets.
Eating our way through the varieties that David offers has been an adventure paralleling his own journey of discovery in bread baking. A double pair of experiences seemed to have helped peak his interest in this realm of nutritious food provider. Step one: as a youngster, he practiced with a swim team extremely early in the morning and his Mother (brilliant matriarch who she was) encouraged him to cook his own breakfast. Step two: he was a reader and become enthralled with nutrition.

Ms. Cook is committed to the discovery and enjoyment of locally grown and crafted foods. She tells a tale of real food choices that will benefit the health of the family and the community.