Brian Noyes - The Red Truck Bakery Farmhouse Cookbook: Sweet and Savory Comfort Food from Americas Favorite Rural Bakery

BRIAN NOYES is the founder and proprietor of the Red Truck Bakery in Marshall, Virginia, and the author of the Red Truck Bakery Cookbook. Brian trained at the Culinary Institute of America (CIA) in Hyde Park, New York, at King Arthur Baking in Norwich, Vermont, and at LAcademie de Cuisine near Washington, D.C. While he was the art director at The Washington Post and Smithsonian magazines, Brian baked pies and breads on weekends in his Virginia Piedmont farmhouse and sold them out of an old red truck he bought from designer Tommy Hilfiger. The Red Truck Bakery now has two destination locations in historic buildings, ships thousands of baked goods nationwide, and has earned accolades from Oprah Winfrey, Barack Obama, and many national publications. Brian is an adviser to the Jacques Ppin Foundation and a member of the Southern Foodways Alliance and the James Beard Foundation. He has written for The Washington Post, Smithsonian, Preservation, Taste of the South, The Local Palate, and Garden & Gun.

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

The lyrical prose of my friend Ronni Lundy is the perfect way to kick off this book. A Kentucky native, Ronni is an expert on Southern and Appalachian foods and their roots, and her home in North Carolina is just over the mountain from where my grandparents lived, a region that plays a big part in my life and this story. Her early book Shuck Beans, Stack Cakes, and Honest Fried Chicken is exactly what it sounds like: the heart and soul and Mother Church of Southern cooking. Her 2016 masterpiece, Victuals, landed with such force that the James Beard Foundation threw at her not one but two top awards before the dust even settled. Bourbon cake clouds Ronnis memory about how we met, but I first caught sight of her at the Southern Food Writers Conference, which collided with Knoxvilles International Biscuit Festival, where I was a judge and dont remember anything about the biscuits but couldnt forget Ronni. Ive shipped her so many baked goods that she finally bellowed, Enough! No more cakes! and told me if I sent anything more, shed have to get new shocks for her Chevy Astro van.

A couple of years ago, on an 850-mile drive from her home near Asheville to western Massachusetts, Ronni stopped by the Red Truck Bakery for a late bite and to pick up a cake to enjoy up north with her friends. I didnt know at the time that Ronnis ultimate destination that day was the home of her literary agent, Lisa Ekus, the best in the business. At Ronnis urging I latched onto Lisa, and she became my agentsteering, coddling, listening, pushing, encouraging, and championing me every step of the wayand each day I love her even more and find out a few more things that we have in common. My wish had been for Lisa to get this cookbooks proposal into the hands of Clarkson Potter editor Francis Lam, whom I had met at a Southern Foodways Alliance symposium (and to whom I listen each weekend on public radios A Splendid Table). What we didnt know was that Francis was about to become editor in chief of Clarkson Potter, and Francis happily introduced me to Lydia OBrien, in whose hands The Red Truck Bakery Farmhouse Cookbook then landed. Before I was a baker, I was a magazine art director, and Ive worked with some of the best editors in the country. That was surpassed with this book, and it was kismet: Lydia is a local, having grown up in Washington, D.C., and has visited the bakery several times with family and friends in tow. Lydia quickly embraced the comfort-with-friends-and-family theme of the bakery and this book, and she has been a true partner of mine throughout the process, with edits that strengthened my words and excellent creative ideas that influenced the design and art direction. This book started with my busted shoulder, and it wrapped up while I was dealing with a serious concussion after a crosswalk accident. Lydia patiently walked me through the final edits while I was having difficulty focusing on the details. Thanks to all of youRonni, Lisa, Francis, and Lydiafor taking good care of my book (and me).

Angie Mosier, the food stylist on my first cookbook, is a prized photographer in her own right (just ask chefs Eric Ripert, Sean Brock, Marcus Samuelsson, Vivian Howard, and Rodney Scott). She is the only person I wanted to capture the charm of my farmhouse and bakery (and the food that came out of both), and her gorgeous photography for this book justified that decision. She embraced my desire to include items important to me in the photos shot at my farmhouse: our Southern pottery and folk art, and family heirlooms that included my maternal grandmothers handmade hundred-year-old quilt, my paternal grandmothers beloved kitchen artifacts, and a metal fireplace screen my great-grandmother handcrafted. Perhaps the image that best captures Angies artistic genius is the stunning slice of lemon chess tart on a bluebird plate (). That picture got others besides me aflutter: Angie was on my farmhouse porch making that photograph when a commotion quickly erupted above her head. I looked up, she told me later, and, you wont believe this, I found two excited bluebirds flying around the porch ceiling duking it out while watching me work.

A cornucopia of thanks to recipe tester Bonnie Benwick, with whom I worked at The Washington Post, where she was the deputy food editor. Dumping nearly one hundred recipes at one time in her email in-box didnt faze her. Her neighbors were the happy beneficiaries of her testing, and I was happy to have just one person overseeing the entire project, ensuring consistency throughout. While I was sidelined with a concussion, Bonniealong with Venus Barratt, our former bakery staffer blessed with a superb sense of styledrove out to the farmhouse to make some of the dishes in this book; it was an extraordinary assistance. I appreciate the help of Jura Koncius and her sister Sigita Clark, who doggedly searched out sources for farmhouse-appropriate linens and fabrics to make our food look its best. Special thanks to friends in the business whose work appears in some form here: Rick Bayless, Ian Boden, Carrie Brown, William Dissen, Diane Flynt, Dixie Grimes, Joe and Katy Kindred, Jeremiah Langhorne, Ouita Michel, Justise Robbins, Bill Smith, Annie Somerville, Frank and Pardis Stitt, and Alice Waters.

Clarkson Potter book designer Ian Dingman, who realized quickly that he and I were both type aficionados, captured the feel of my bakery even better than I did in the first book and Im really pleased that he surpassed his superb work on this book. Thanks, too, to Marysarah Quinn, Stephanie Huntwork, Terry Deal, Monica Stanton, and Jana Branson on the Clarkson Potter team, who reminded me of the most enjoyable parts of my publishing days.

It took the mentoring of baking pros to coax me out of the world of newspapers and magazines and into a professional kitchen. Thanks, first, to Connie OMeara, who let me talk my way into early-morning training shifts at her bakery on Cape Cod while I was on vacation from The Washington Post (she advised me not to give up my day job). Thankfully, Mark Ramsdell (a former assistant pastry chef at the White House) saw my passion and took me under his wing through two years of his classes at the much-missed LAcademie de Cuisine outside of Washington, D.C. Instructor Eric Kastel at the Culinary Institute of America in Hyde Park, New York, encouraged me through strict discipline, special projects, and three a.m. baking shifts for their store and caf. King Arthur Baking Company chef and instructor Jeffrey Hamelman introduced me to the magic of his companys philosophy and their products in Norwich, Vermont, and taught me how to run a bakery kitchen. The iconic old red truck I bought for the farm from designer Tommy Hilfiger inadvertently gave the business its name and charm (thanks, Tommylook what it started).