Creative Loafing

“Bread is just flour, water, salt, and some alchemy,” says Susannah Gebhart, founder of Old World Levain Bakery in Asheville. She’s being modest, of course. Transforming a handful of pantry staples into something magical also takes a skilled baker, and the labor of devoted farmers and millers supplying high-quality grains and fresh ingredients. Whether their loaves embrace South Carolina rice, Virginia hard red winter wheat, or Louisiana sweet potatoes, these seven bakeries make up part of a new generation preserving an ancient art while also changing the way the South thinks about bread.

Franklin Bakehouse

FRANKLIN, TENNESSEE

Randy Thompson says he feels almost like a mad scientist in the kitchen of Franklin Bakehouse. “I’m always asking, what would happen if I put in bread? Sometimes I stumble upon a happy accident.” While touring the nearby Leiper’s Fork Distillery, for instance, Thompson discovered what would become his most prized ingredient. “The grains they were using to make whiskey were the same stuff I put in bread,” the head baker says. Now each of his loaves includes Leiper’s Fork sour mash, tasted prominently in his crowd-favorite sourdough. Other experiments have involved peaches he won in a raffle at a fair, jalapeños off his smoker, and oatmeal cooked with root beer. “If you bite into a loaf and can’t tell what’s in it, I’m not doing my job,” Thompson says. “I’m always tinkering with how to make my bread evoke a memory.”