Bread Blog

Baking Up some Soulful Americana

Thu, 10 May 2012 12:46:00 GMT

com-pan-ion \kum-'pan-yun\ n [fr. L com with + OF pain bread] 1: someone with whom you share your bread

When traveling, JP & I always make a point of visiting other Great Harvest bakeries. We were fortunate to hook up with Brad & Alicia, owners of the Temecula, CA bakery. We spent a magical night at their home enjoying delicious food and great live music. The setting: their home on the edge of a cliff overlooking the city; large fire pit keeping us warm; a homemade bandstand adorned with lights; foot-stomping, hip-swaying live music -- I felt like I was in a video!

The musician, Lee Koch (pronounced "cook") was a baker from the Temecula bakery -- who happened to be a contestant on NBC's The Voice. We knew he was going to be traveling so we told him to come by Lafayette if his travels took him to Louisiana. Well....sure enough, we got a call a few weeks later...Lee and his wife Nicole were a couple of days away from Lafayette!

Lee & Nicole shared their dreams with us over their first batch of boiled crawfish. I had this preconceived notion of what a contestant on The Voice would be like. Of course, Lee blew that outta the water. He was grounded and real and living in the moment. He was following his dream of being a musician. I was glad our children could see the trust, humbleness, and bravery in Lee, living in pursuit of his passion.

Lee & Nicole's positive energy filled our house and our lives during that delightful 3 day adventure. Our kids got to jam with him. Lee finished the visit with a rockin' performance at the Blue Moon Saloon.

Lee & Nicole -- thanks for stopping in Lafayette. We were honored to share our bread -- and be companions on the journey!

P.S. Nicole is a gifted photographer. Check out her additional Lafayette pictures, here.

Laissez' les Bon Temps Rouler'

Sat, 18 Feb 2012 17:35:00 GMT

I heard Chief Rabbi Lord Jonathan Sacks in a radio interview recently. He said that if someone took a crash course in understanding all Jewish festivals, it would be summed up in 3 sentences. "They tried to kill us. We survived. Let's eat!" This resonated with me because I think we have a similar history in our Cajun tradition. That’s why we are in South Louisiana, right? They tried to do away with our ancestors in Nova Scotia. Our people survived Le Grand Derangement by living off the land in the beautiful swamps of South La. And we continue to celebrate with food and music and more.

We are upon one of these times where religious tradition is intertwined with our culture and Mardi Gras emerges. Even now, I can still remember being at my friend’s house in the country. Growing up in Eunice, I never considered myself being from the country but I had friends that lived there! Mr. “Coonie” and Mrs. LuLu made sure the chicken was ready. Leslie and I sat on the front porch waiting to see the moving dust cloud on the dirt road --- the sign that the riders were close. It was always a love/hate relationship. As young girls, we were curious and wanted to see all the revelry and the chicken-chasin'. But we knew it was inevitable that we’d be carried away to dance with some crazy masked person. So embarrassing!!

Now we are embarrassing our own kids and hoping that they will understand the passing on of old stories, songs,

dances, and best of all, food! The wet weather is beckoning us to make duck gumbo and splurge on King Cake until

Tuesday midnight. We can help with delicious rolls for the gumbo. Also, our last batch of King Cakes is coming out of the oven as I type....

Come get you some. (Open Sat until 4pm. Closed on Sunday, Monday, & Tuesday for Mardi Gras - going to the country.)

Keeping Up..

Wed, 08 Feb 2012 13:29:00 GMT

Ever since Dallas left the bakery, I haven't been able to keep up with this blog. I loved how he wrote and was so excited that the responsibility was off my back! But here I am again...Dallas, where are you when I need you??? I'll do my best to keep this space a place where your neighborhood bread store, Great Harvest, may get a little sentimental or obnoxiously opinionated or just plain silly. By the way, I really think I'll be saying "your neighborhood cafe' " more and more since Cafe' Cohen is serving up the most delicious coffee & latte's in Lafayette right inside the bakery.

But to more pressing news at hand:

It's KING CAKE SEASON!

Beginning Friday on the Epiphany, we will have a variety of flavors to choose from!

Pain Fais' Bless - My Dad named this one: a Cajun saying that means "Bread so good it makes me want to faint!" Made with Cinnamon Chips and butter - simple, soft, and scrumptious. Available at 7am daily.

Pecan - Made with cinnamon roll dough and a very generous portion of Louisiana pecans! Available at 7am daily.

White Chocolate Berry - We roll up our dough with swirl of white chocolate chips, dried cranberries, and dried cherries -- the perfect combination of sweetness & tartness! Available daily. You can even order one with red sugar in a heart shape for Valentines!

Cinnamon Burst Extreme - Made with our famous Cinnamon Burst Extreme dough on Tue, Thur, & Sat. It's got a swirl of cinnamon, butter, & brown sugar with cinnamon chips in the bread!

Whole Wheat Cinnamon Burst Extreme - 100% whole grain - the only one in town! Baked on Mon, Wed & Fridays.

Harvest - Busting with dried cranberries, apricots, & raisins and Louisiana navel oranges mixed in the dough. A Great Harvest original. Only available on Fridays.

Of course, they all come with icing and green, gold, & purple sugar on top! With the baby, too.
To estimate the demand, orders are appreciated. We can ship a King Cake to your loved ones anywhere in the Continental US.

What can we give for Christmas?

Mon, 19 Dec 2011 15:11:00 GMT

I came upon this quote a long time ago and I love it. Imagine what the world will be like when we choose these gifts...

Christmas gift suggestions:
To your enemy, forgiveness.
To an opponent, tolerance.
To a friend, your heart.
To a customer, service.
To all, charity.
To every child, a good example.
To yourself, respect.
- Oren Arnold, American editor and free-lance writer (1900-1980)

We hope you have a Blessed Christmas!

Michelle & J.P. MacFadyen

Free Bread if you Loaf with Us!

Sun, 30 Oct 2011 14:26:00 GMT

If you have ever been in the store and heard this question, "Are you a loafer?", please don't take offense. It's really a compliment here to all of our best customers. Because of their devotion, we created a program that gives back. As a Loafer, you gain reward points for a variety of purchases - bread, muffins, sandwiches, etc.

And that is why we started a Facebook promo, " Loafers Win Free Bread." Sign up and you have a chance to be one of the 5 Loafers of the year! (You've got really good odds!) You can win 1 FREE bread a month for 12 months in 2012. The 5 winners will be announced on December 1, 2011. Plus, if you get 3 friends to sign up, you'll get a coupon for a FREE loaf or sandwich now and we'll automatically enter you into our Loafer Rewards program. For more details, visit us here: http://on.fb.me/ghaloafer

Manny says it's his treat!

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sw9QQZWNhAY&feature=related

Farm to Family - Celebrating Food Day

Fri, 21 Oct 2011 16:17:00 GMT

Many of the most prominent voices for change in the food movement and a growing number of health, hunger, and sustainable agriculture groups are taking part in Food Day—a nationwide campaign to change the way Americans eat and think about food. Organized by the Center for Science in the Public Interest, Food Day will encourage people around the country to sponsor or participate in activities that encourage Americans to “eat real” and support healthy, affordable food grown in a sustainable, humane way.

Food Day will be observed on Monday, October 24, 2011, and will include a series of marquee events in Washington, New York City, San Francisco, and other major cities. When I saw the plans for this day starting to take shape across America, I thought, "Well if Lafayette won the BEST FOOD TOWN in Rand McNally's Best of the Road, surely we need to have a big bad celebration for the inaugural celebration of Food Day. " So here we are: Great Harvest Bread Co. is making sure that Lafayette, LA is on the map for Food Day. We have a full set of activities from 1pm-7pm. See all the details on our Community Page. We hope to see you on Monday.

The national campaign will advocate progress toward five central goals:

• Reducing diet-related disease by promoting healthy foods. The American diet is too low in fruits, vegetables, and whole grains and too high in fatty meat, soft drinks, and salty packaged and restaurant foods—contributing to hundreds of thousands of premature deaths each year due to heart disease, diabetes, stroke, and cancer. SO ON FOOD DAY (MONDAY), you can come fill up on FRESH PRODUCE from LOCAL FARMERS & fill up on WHOLE GRAIN BREAD!

• Supporting sustainable farms and stopping subsidies to agribusiness. Billions of federal dollars a year would be better spent helping environmentally conscious family farmers than huge agribusiness operations.

• Expanding access to food and alleviating hunger. Far too many Americans don't know where their next meal is coming from, or have access to fresh produce in their neighborhood.

• Reforming factory farms to protect animals and the environment. Farming of animals can and should be done without cruelty, and without degrading the quality of life in rural America.

• Curbing junk-food marketing to kids. Food companies should not be targeting children with foods that promote tooth decay, obesity, and other health problems.

Click here to ask your Members of Congress to support the Eat Real agenda, which advocates for healthy
foods in schools and for low-income consumers.

Until We Meet Again

Sat, 27 Aug 2011 16:15:00 GMT

When I put in my two week’s notice Michelle told me she wanted me to blog one more time before I left. I’ve been racking my brain for a week-and-a-half trying to think of another G. Harvest adventure. I thought about the afternoon when I was sitting on the beach in Pattaya, Thailand while homesick and how I could translate that longing for home into G. Harvest coming up with our recipe for Oatmeal cookies while sitting on the same beach. I thought about something with the Russian Mafia and the Trans-Siberian Railway. But none of the story arcs were there… they were just flat. So, sorry Michelle, but you’re just going to get a sentimental blog post instead.

I’ve worked at Great Harvest for almost six years. I started the week after our first Thanksgiving. I was a typical Cajun when I started which means that I ate rice as my preferred starch and bread was reserved for poboys and sandwiches. I learned a lot more about life in the over 200,000 loaves that I’ve helped make than I ever expected and I’m not the only one: there is a book that has been written about Great Harvest’s unique approach to doing business.

For starters I learned to care about what I put in my mouth. It’s amazingly easy to learn about the food you eat if you just take the time to pick up a book or two... or ask a Great Harvest employee. After hearing J.P. & Michelle talk about the health benefits of our whole grain bread and after lots of books and articles, I still feel totally comfortable eating our bread and feeding it to my kids.

I also learned to care about the people around me. I learned that from J.P. & Michelle as well as from my coworkers more than from the Great Harvest franchise. My bosses and coworkers have graciously forgiven me when my perfectionism and temper have gotten the best of me. In an interview I had a few months ago I called Great Harvest my MBA program because I’ve learned more about people through standing around a table kneading dough than I ever did in a business class or a cube farm.

I learned about living life and not just existing. I’ve worked with people who played music professionally or tried really hard to make a living out of it and didn’t regret trying. I worked alongside a woman who hiked the Appalachian Trail (and inspired G. Harvest’s Chocolate Brownie Bread story). I’ve worked with one guy who built his own house and another who left Key West with one bag of books, one bag of clothes, and no plan for what to do when he arrived in Arizona (it worked out). I’ve worked with so many women who love their families deeply and remind me to enjoy my kids while they are young and not just moan about seven straight years of diaper changing and butt wiping. These men and women have inspired me to take risks and write life’s story with bold strokes.

J.P. has a shirt that says “creating community one loaf at a time”. They’ve done it. Over the last two weeks I’ve been telling some of our regular customers goodbye and I’ve been surprised by the looks of concern and regret on their faces. It means a lot to me that their baker means as much to them as they have meant to me. The good news is that you guys are still in good hands with all of the other people who work here… they know how to split the Morning Sampler just like you want and that you don’t like red onion and tomato on your sandwich!

When an employee leaves Great Harvest they get to write on the inside wall of the oven. We jokingly call it the Wall of Shame but, secretly, I like to open it from time to time and remember my former coworkers. There are a lot of great stories attached to those people. Over the last couple of weeks I’ve thought about what I would add to the wall. As soon as I hit the "save" button on this blog post I'm off to write it:

Dear Great Harvest,

I’ve lived on two continents and worked in jobs varying from Radio DJ to Pastor, Teacher to Event Coordinator. You have taught me more about life than every job beforehand and probably more than any job that will follow. You’ve fed my family and my soul for over five years.

Thank you.

Dallas Begnaud

And for those of you who’ve read the blog or put up with my obnoxious personality in the bakery, thank you, too.

I Don't Care if Monday's Blue...

Tue, 12 Jul 2011 14:01:00 GMT

Every once in a while I’m here on Mondays. I’m either out running errands and pop in to say hi to whoever is prepping for the week or I’m here for a cleaning day. Either way, there’s one thing that I take away from a Monday in the bakery- the “clunk” of the door as people pull on it who think that we’re open.

To any of you who’ve done that, let me say that we’re sorry. It’s always a humbling thing for me to think about how each of you goes out of your way to buy our products. We hate that you have taken time on a Monday to swing by for our breads, sweets, or sandwiches and have walked away frustrated.

Let me also say that those days are over!

As of now we are open on Mondays! No more “clunk” as you pull on a locked door. We’ll be here just like we are every other weekday, making sweets, sandwiches, and from-scratch bread… everything with as many local ingredients as possible.

So, come on in to Great Harvest… now open Monday – Saturday!

With opening Mondays, we’re changing our hours later in the week to reflect the way that Acadiana lives.

We’re open Monday – Thursday from 7am to 6pm, Fridays from 7am – 5pm, and Saturdays from 7am – 4pm or whenever we sell out.

Rockin' Blues

Sat, 02 Jul 2011 17:09:00 GMT

Last weekend my wife and I packed up the kids and headed to my In-Law’s farm in Carencro. It’s a lovely piece of land on the Coteau Ridge and your soul exhales as soon as you enter it. After a round of hugs and kisses my Mother-In-Law invited my sons to go pick blueberries. I decided to join ‘em because, well, I’d never picked blueberries before. The only way I’ve known them is in the little plastic cartons from the produce section of the store or in the white bags of the frozen aisle.

Picking blueberries is much easier than picking blackberries. No stickers to scratch skin. No brambles that copperheads or other snakes might be hiding in. No barbed wire fences to navigate. Just bushes with berries ranging from green (just formed) to blue (ripe) with shades of red in between. All I had to do was walk up and wipe back a little of the powder from the berry’s skin to see if it was ripe! On top of being easy to pick, blueberries are easy to grow in South Louisiana because they like acidic soil and we’ve got plenty of that.

Just like with everything else that is harvested in the peak of its season, they were delectable. It was strange having a warm blueberry at first because I’ve only known them out of a refrigerator but it didn’t take long to just enjoy them as they are meant to be enjoyed… like a warm splash of summer on your palate.

The good folks at Blue Moon Saloon have latched onto this mid-summer delight and are putting together the Inaugural BluesBerry Festival to celebrate the blueberry as well as raise money for a local farmers’ network. They’ve added a cooking competition for restaurants that use local ingredients, too. [As an aside, I'm amazed that we haven't used the blueberry as yet another perfectly good reason/excuse to party before this year!]

When J.P. & Michelle were approached about participating in the BluesBerry Festival they almost immediately said yes because they (1) love music and (2) love supporting local farmers. It can be a challenge to cook with local, seasonal ingredients but the rewards are really, really high when you do it right… and we look forward to showing anyone who shows up at the Blue Moon Saloon on Saturday, July 16th how good we can rock a blueberry!

Salads for Summer's Swimsuits

Sat, 25 Jun 2011 17:39:00 GMT

It’s hot outside. Really, really hot. And we’re in a drought that’s as bad as the Great Dustbowl of the 1930s.

A swimming pool and a cold, citrusy drink sound great after you read those previous sentences don't they? I know because I feel the same way. Out of desperation I’ve been inflating and filling my kids’ swimming pool on an every-other-week basis and splashing/soaking in it for three days until the water gets a little slimy. I’ll then drain it and start over a couple of weeks later when I start to feel more like I live in Arizona than Acadiana.

I also know that some of you hear the words “swimming pool” and subconsciously tighten up your stomach. You immediately start thinking about swimsuits and how you’ll look in ‘em. I get it. I feel the same way. A lot of us also wonder if we can drop a few pounds before we have to put a suit on again.

We’re looking out for you if you’ve got a trip to the beach or a 4^th of July pool party coming up… we’ve got three great salads that load up on flavor without loading you down with calories. We make them year ‘round but we notice that sales have gone up over the last month ;-) You don’t have to sacrifice a great lunch to look great in that swimsuit!

---

The Garden Salad
Available with a grilled chicken breast if you like, it’s our crisp lettuce blend with cucumbers, mixed peppers, carrots, tomatoes, red onion & olives.

Chicken Pecan Salad
A scoop of our famous chicken salad in a nest of our salad greens with tomato & thinly sliced red onion.

Field of Greens Salad
Our fresh mixed greens, homemade spicy pecans, chopped apples, dried cranberries, and toasted sunflower seeds.

Swamp Pop

Sat, 11 Jun 2011 18:01:00 GMT

I’m not a fan of the savory-sweet thing that is sweeping the nation. White chocolate and bacon? Cherry and steak? Blue cheese and fig? Forget it. In the words of Cedric the Entertainer, I’m a grown man. If I am having a steak, I want a steak. If I’m having figs, I want figs. My food is not a toy so stop playing with it! Don’t ruin one thing by mixing it with another. I don’t need to confuse my mouth with all these flavors that my ancestors were perfectly fine not combining.

At least I was until I tried our Swamp Pop.

J.P. & I were on a hiking trip and hanging out around the campfire eating trail mix from a big box store. We both agreed that we could make it better and spent the next 20 minutes figuring out what to put in ours. I don’t remember who to give the creative credit to but one of us talked about putting our spicy pecans from the Ya-Ya Chicken Salad into the trail mix recipe we were working on in our heads. The next week I whipped up a test batch and tentatively threw a handful into my mouth.

Whoa.

The salty crunch of peanuts and sunflowers gave way to creamy chocolate that was chased by tart cranberries and it all finished with just the right amount of warmth for a South Louisiana palette. I still don’t want blue cheese with my figs but I will definitely take some heat with my sweet!

Our Swamp Pop is available any time you want it… just look for it on the front counter or ask one of us to point it out to you. It’s just as good as a snack in the car as it is on a trail. Please don’t put it on a steak but, if you’re adventurous, we’d love to hear how it is combined with breakfast cereal!

Gifts that Give in Two Directions

Sat, 04 Jun 2011 11:50:00 GMT

There’s a pretty high chance that you’ve never heard of SERRV. I never had until I saw one of their boxes in the storage room of the bakery. J.P. & Michelle had casually mentioned that we were switching basket suppliers in the past but I didn’t pay much attention to it. Then I started looking at the tags on the baskets as well as the fliers in their office.

If I may brag on them for a second, let me tell you that we’ve got some cool bosses here at the bakery. They bend over backwards to accommodate our vacation days (next week we’ve got five different customer service people out the entire week and they would still say yes if another one asked for the week off). They pay us more than minimum wage and I’ve not once in 5½ years heard them complain about it. But, even more than that, they’re generous outside of these walls.

We could get baskets a little cheaper from other suppliers but J.P. & Michelle decided that the lives of the people making the baskets were just as important as the lives of the people making the bread. SERRV provides a living wage to the artisans who make the baskets as well as teaching them how to properly price their products, taking into account everything we in the developed world do for ours (labor, not just materials, etc.).

Here’s a blurb from their website:

From a small group of church relief workers helping refugees rebuild after World War II, SERRV has grown into a $9.5 million fair trade network connecting thousands of artisans in developing countries with customers and volunteers across the United States.

As Sunil Chitrakar, director of SERRV’s partner Mahaguthi in Nepal, said, “Longer than many of our lives, SERRV has served humankind!...SERRV made history; becoming one of very few organizations who served more than five decades for the artisans and producers around the world. It started as an idealistic dream to help the poor and turned into Fair Trade.”

So, feel good about a gift basket you buy here. It’s not only a gift to the person you give it to but to the person in the Third World country that made it as well!

J.P. & Michelle's Aha Moment

Sat, 28 May 2011 16:22:00 GMT

J.P. & Michelle recently made a video for Mutual of Omaha about their "Aha" Moment when it came to opening a Great Harvest in Acadiana. Check it out!

Cookies for Dad

Sun, 29 May 2011 13:59:00 GMT

My brother-in-law is kind of a pain in the rear. I love him and I have a blast with him but he is impossible to buy a gift for. He’ll return anything you give him. Anything. My family finally just gave up and started giving him gift cards. There’s no excitement to giving him a gift, though. He opens the envelope, looks at which store the gift card is to, and then says “thank you”. We just watch him repeat the whole process two or three times.

The only gift I’ve found that (1) he can’t return and that (2) he actually likes is food. Maybe you’ve got a guy like that in your life or maybe you just want to do something different for Father’s Day this year. Either way we’ve got Cookies for Dad coming up the week of Father’s Day.

Cookies for Dad is the ultimate Father’s Day gift. You bring your kids to the bakery; they shape the cookies themselves and decorate the box while we bake ‘em. They package the cookies and take ‘em home. We still haven’t had a dad complain and we’ve done this for years!

Real Ranch with Nothing to Hide

Sat, 14 May 2011 17:30:00 GMT

Vegetable oil, egg yolk, sugar, salt, buttermilk, spices, garlic, onion, vinegar, phosphoric acid, xanthan gum, modified food starch, MSG, artificial flavors, disodium phosphate, sorbic acid, calcium disodium EDTA, disodium inosinate and disodium guanylate.

That’s the ingredient list for a certain ranch dressing that we used to serve. You might find it hidden somewhere… like in a valley. The first few ingredients aren’t bad at all. It’s the second half of that list that bothered us a lot. It gnawed at me because we found it pretty easy to make a from-scratch Honey Mustard dressing and we’ve always done our Balsamic Vinaigrette from scratch. That ranch was a challenge, though. Nothing we tried could even come close to the ranch dressing that everyone knows as Ranch Dressing.

So, we gave up. We couldn't do a great ranch and we wanted to get rid of all the junk in that dressing's trunk so we took ranch off of the menu and went with our Creamy Peppercorn dressing. To say that it flopped would be like saying that it hasn’t been too long since UL Football played in a bowl game.

J.P. came to the rescue a few weeks ago and whipped one up for us (as an aside, we should have known the Yankee would get the Ranch Dressing right). It’s great. It’s got the right amount of tang while not sacrificing that velvety, creamy flavor you know and love if you dig ranch.

So the next time you have a salad with Ranch, eat well knowing that there’s only the first half of that ingredient list up there because we make it from scratch, only with ingredients you know how to say!