Half a loaf of Daniel Blanchard’s bread is better than none. But it’s even better when you get a whole loaf. Or more.
“I’ve always had a big nostalgia for bread and all things bread, so to speak,” says Blanchard, owner of Blanchard’s Organic Breads. “So, if I can’t find something locally that I like, I try to make it myself. Through my experiences of eating and working in restaurants, I always leaned toward the bread rather than the meat.
“I worked in a Philly cheese place in Arizona a couple of years ago. It had the most amazing bread. And before any of the meats or anything like that, I remember the bread and the baker bringing it in. These huge 24-inch long baguettes.”
A native of Atlanta, Blanchard says, “I grew up with a baker in my neighborhood who was really influential and left a lot of memories of focaccias, brioches, and stuff like that.”
Blanchard’s first “real yeast bread” was a king cake. “I really wanted a king cake and I baked it.”
Bread baking “really kicked in” during the pandemic when he was out of work. “I had a little stimulus money and I invested it in a lot of tools and ingredients to cook with,” he says.
Blanchard bakes organically. “To provide people with not just nutritious food but stuff that’s good for the environment and good for agriculture, that means a lot to me,” he says. “I’ve always gone out of my way to shop and eat organically in my home as much as I can.”
He sells his bread on social media @blanchardsorganicbreads. “I generally will post on Wednesday what I’m baking for the weekend. So, that gives me time to feed my starter and get it built up.”
Sourdough is “definitely a scheduling thing and a dance at the same time. It’s a symbiotic dance you have to do to make sure everything comes out the time you’re expecting it to come out.”
Blanchard rotates from the American style to French style of sourdough bread. The French bread has “a little bit more wheat in it. A little heartier. Tighter crumb. And stays fresher for a week. American has bigger bubbles in it. The French is tighter and denser, but still very delicious.”
Blanchard also makes and sells French pastries, including éclairs and canelés, a baked custard with vanilla and rum. As a cottage baker, he only makes “things that are able to not be refrigerated.”
He uses the “traditional cream cheese” in his king cakes, but his are “so much more different” than the New Orleans king cakes he grew up with, Blanchard says.
His king cake is “a traditional French brioche. I roll it with cream cheese, cinnamon, and cardamom. And then I top it with a whipped cream icing, naturally dyed sugars, and Jacobsen finishing sea salt, which adds a slightly salty aspect to the overly sweet topping. You can tell by the colors that mine are not something you get at the grocery. A little duller, but natural looking.”
Blanchard recently began making galette de rois, a French king cake. “It’s more savory than sweet because of the puff pastry. The frangipane has sweetness, but the almond and butter that go into it have the subtle sweetness I like.”
Blanchard bought a 1970s International Truck, which he plans to convert into a “mobile bakery.”
“A brick-and-mortar and all that is just such a huge investment. I want to start small and grow at a good pace. I’m not trying to expand too fast.
“I still consider myself an amateur. But I’m working toward being a professional. I think my bread is definitely on a professional level. My pastries are getting there.”
Baking is therapy, Blanchard says. “It gives you a chance to block out all the other things that are going on in your life and just focus on something that isn’t just serving you but serving other families and children. I’m creating memories that I cherish from growing up for other people.”
