Page 21 - The Valley Table - Summer 2021

consumers’ needs and aligned with America’s reputation for cookie-cutter productivity. Not until decades later did some consumers begin to appreciate what was lost.
One of those consumers? Daniel Leader, who founded Bread Alone in fall of 1983.
Back then, “bread was Wonder Bread,” says Nels Leader, Daniel’s son and the CEO of Bread Alone. “When you
went to the supermarket, you couldn’t buy a crusty French baguette. It wasn’t even in the vocabulary at the time. Part of the reason my father founded the business was because he knew of a different style of baking from spending time in Europe — Paris, in particular — and he didn’t see it here.”
Bread Alone, in the company of businesses like Tom Cat Bakery, Berkshire Mountain Bakery, Acme Bread, and La Brea Bakery, slowly reminded the country of the wonder of artisanal bread. This, in combination with the organic food revolution, which would not truly gain traction until the mid-’90s, sowed the seeds of what would become a return- to-roots movement.
In taking lessons from the past, Bread Alone was actually creating the future. Besides using artisanal techniques,
the company also made organic agriculture a fixture of its business nearly a decade before the USDA developed the organic certification label and criteria. As the business grew, what began as a line of fine print on the packaging took on growing importance to consumers.
Natural fermentation was the only way bread and baked goods were produced until about 100 years ago.
—Aaron Quint, Kingston Bread + Bar
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