Baker fills 'knead' for local bread

Author: Thomas Brush

The past three Mondays have seen the whir of traffic jams, bicyclists and joggers which mark a typical spring afternoon on Main Street supplemented by a perhaps slightly less congruent sight - Yannig Tanguy leaning against the brick retaining wall in front of Steele's Auto Center, his dented white van parked behind him, a guitar in hand and baskets teeming with loaves of oven-fresh bread, biscuits and pastries spread out on a table in front of him.

"It's just something new I'm trying," said Tanguy, owner and founder of the Crown Point Bread Company, a Crown Point, N.Y.-based bakery which offers baking classes, supplies and consulting in addition to a wide array of French, artisan, sourdough and organic breads. "In the past, I've sold a lot of bread in different stores in town, but I'm just getting back into larger-scale business."

The roots of such a business are to be found in Tanguy's earliest recollections.

"As a little kid, I liked bread," he said. "It's something I've always been interested in."

This interest was supplemented early in his life by the hands-on experience he garnered in trips to France - his family's country of origin - to see rising yeast in action. These lessons served, in large part, to form the foundation of Tanguy's present-day operations.

"I'm basically baking Old World breads," he said. "I have a wood-fired oven, and my own stone grist mill, so I'm milling a lot of flour from local grain producers."

While stepping away from the oven and into the streets of Middlebury has thus far proven to be a lucrative endeavor on the whole, Tanguy rakes in more "dough" on some days than on others.

"This week's a little slower than usual because school's out and all the kids are on vacation," he said. "There's not as much traffic on the sidewalk."

Tanguy gladly capitalizes upon the occasional lulls in business, however, to turn to another one of his passions: music.

"I like old-time country music and bluegrass," he said, strumming a few notes on his guitar. "It's a way to pass the time while I'm waiting for customers to stop by."

When customers do materialize, they rarely disappoint.

"There are some interesting people who come along," Tanguy said. "They tell me stories sometimes."

As if on cue to punctuate his statement, a middle-aged man in a pick-up truck inching his way through mid-afternoon traffic rolled down his window to shout something scarcely intelligible - though sufficiently enthusiastic - to Tanguy.

"Yeah, I'll do that!" he responded.

Selling his product outdoors by the roadside is not the only manner in which the baker gives a nod to days of old.

"I like to make the bread that the French were baking in the colonial period," Tanguy said. "I actually make one that is like the bread they were baking in Crown Point 250 years ago, to try to continue a tradition."

Tanguy's baking methods are similarly traditional.

"I like to make things from scratch, and use local ingredients whenever I can," he said. "The product has more of a soul that way."