The thing about Asheville is you can walk out your door and you can be in, for all intents
and purposes, complete wilderness in five minutes.
I'm in the country and yet right now we're in the heart of the town, we're right downtown,
and I've always, all my life, wanted to live in the country and often have.
I get to have both worlds.
I find it to be an incredibly supportive and just engaging community.
I'm amazed, especially when I started making bread because I began to meet so many people.
The different people from different countries, it's cosmopolitan, believe it or not.
It's that sense that you wake up in the morning and even though I live alone, I don't feel
as though I'm in this alone.
And I have that great feeling that, you know, I'm part of a tribe, I guess is what it is.
My name is Anna Fessenden, and I am a village bread baker, the village baker.
I have a product line of nine different breads, now some of them are the same bread.
For example, I have something called a country white, which is a very kind of rustic white,
but with a lot of whole wheat and wheat germ back in, so it's a dark crumb.
By crumb I mean that inside here is, it's not white, in other words.
And then I take that country white and I add whole black olives and rosemary, so that's
a second line.
So when I say I have nine different products, it doesn't mean I necessarily bake nine different
kinds of bread, but I'll take the same doughs and incorporate different ingredients in them.
Dave is my brother, who is 23 months older than me.
We grew up very, very close.
Anna started her bread thing, and both Helen, our older sister and myself, we always, there's
a great deal of competition and we got into it as well, but none of us could hold a candle
to Anna's careful cooking techniques.
Bread is one thing, there's not a lot of room for improvisation.
Bread is a creature of habit, and it really likes to be made a certain way, and temperatures
and the chemistry of it need consistency.
Now that I'm selling it and making it for people to eat, there's another whole dimension
of just the joy that it brings people.
I just can't tell you, I've never had a job in my life where people stop me on the street
and hug me for what I'm doing.
I am Nan Paredi, and I own Elmer's Store, where we sell end-of-bread.
You can do the baguettes, and truly, you are in France, you do the rye, you're in Germany.
You can take a whole trip around the world just eating your bread.
I recommend it.
I make it a point to buy good bread, search out good bread.
I mean, I never spent six months in Germany, made good bread over there, but I've never
had any bread that I like better than hers.
French bread is absolutely stunning stuff, and you gotta eat it all in one day.
The problem is, if you buy like a half a baguette, you're gonna eat the whole thing yourself,
so you have to pretend by buying a whole one and knowing that you're gonna share.
Eat them right away, they don't last for a while, it's like buying a candy bar.
You can put it in the refrigerator, but it doesn't mean you're not gonna go back in there
real shortly to go get another piece of it.
I love Anna Fessenden, and I love Anna's bread.
It's been such a great addition to town, and I love seeing Anna bike down the street with
her basket of bread.
There's nothing better than that.
