We recently sat down with G. Harvest, the man behind our bread recipes and the adventures that inspired them, to ask him a few questions some of us have been dying to find out about.  Here are some of our favorite parts of the conversation:

What’s your favorite country that you’ve visited?
That’s like asking a mother which of her children she loves the most.  You’re not supposed to do it plus, due to the close relationships I have with Heads of State in different countries, I really should not answer that question.  Some of the dictators would make sure I had an “accident” they next time I visited them if their country wasn’t the one I loved the most.

OK, then what place do you hope to never visit again?
Afghanistan.  My friend Peter and I ran into some Al Qaeda members when we were there in the early 90s.  They thought we were trying to steal some of their opium harvest and we’re lucky we escaped with our lives.

How did you know Elizabeth Gilbert (the author of Eat Pray Love)?
Let’s put it this way: I may or may not have been a central character in one of her books and she may or may not have changed my name in that book.

What’s your most meaningful experience abroad?
During my time in China I visited Beidaihe, a coastal resort town, near Beijing.  One sunrise I hopped from boulder to boulder as far out into the Bohai Gulf as I could go.  I sat on that last solitary rock with nothing but an endless expanse of water between me and the changing colors of the sky as the sunrise approached.  At the exact moment the sun broke over the horizon a street performer started playing his Chinese flute on the road behind me.  I wept openly at the beauty of the moment.  I always look back to that as the moment I truly realized how much beauty there is in every day if you make the time to see it.
Either that morning in China or when the Saints won the Super Bowl.

What brought you back to Acadiana after so much travel?
Well, that’s not how I look at it.  I’m not “back”.  Acadiana is the sun around which my travels orbit but, just like the earth never stops spinning, I never stop travelling.  Also, you never leave Acadiana.  You just begin a very long journey back to it.
However, to answer the spirit of our question, when I sailed around the world I discovered so many types of bread.  I began a love affair with this simple food that sustains so many cultures.  I had a eureka moment in the middle of the Atlantic as I prepared for my return to the USA: Acadiana didn’t have a bakery devoted to wheat.  Beautiful, whole wheat.  My nonk (uncle) worked with bees and would regularly bring me fresh honey.  Combining fresh, wheat bread with local honey was a natural fit.  Once JP & Michelle found out about me and brought me on as a consultant it set me free to get back to the joie du vivre and away from the day-to-day toils of life at a bakery.

So what’s your favorite bread that you’ve made?
Dakota.  The Sioux of the Great Plains were a hospitable and compassionate people to me when I rode my horse across their land.  I made sure to name my best creation after them.  A slice of Dakota right out of the toaster with anything on it is one of life’s simple pleasures.

We bake G. Harvest’s Dakota on Tuesdays, Thursdays, and Saturdays.   His other recipes are available Tuesday through Saturday during our regular business hours.