With International Women’s Day right around the corner, we are featuring a women-owned business as our Producer Spotlight this month.
From sliced bread to mini loaves to cookies., the Bread Shed in Keene, NH has a delicious array of baked goods to satisfies your whole family. Brittany Migneault, owner and founder of the Bread Shed, has baking in her blood—she grew up learning from her aunt and uncle who owned a traditional Italian Bakery. In 2011 Brittany opened the doors of her own bakery.
Their products are handcrafted and all-natural. They use only ingredients that can be recognized and that belong in real food. They offer a wide variety of shapes and sizes of products so that each customer can find the right size product to suit their needs. It is a product that you can feel good about serving.
It is hard to choose our favorite Bread Shed product (well maybe not for our Marketing Manager), but Brittany knows what she loves: “My favorite product of ours is the Toscano, hands down,” says Brittany. “It always has been and always will be. The Toscano is one of the first breads that I learned to bake from my uncle, but it isn’t my favorite just because of the nostalgia. I absolutely love the interior texture and the flavor of the wheat. The Toscano has a thin outer crust with a soft chewy interior. We offer it as our Rustic Baguette or our Toscano Deli loaves (which are spin-offs our traditional Italian Toscano loaf) and are more geared toward restaurants and cafes.”
You can find the Bread Shed in many grocery stores and schools in the area. And selling locally is important to Brittany. “I believe selling locally and the local food movement are important for many reasons. To start with, the food is cleaner. When you are buying from your local farmers and neighbors, the food is fresh and there aren’t any added preservatives. It’s also important that we put good food into our bodies. Also, I think the food is just so much more delicious! I also love seeing small businesses and my neighbors thrive. Great local food is becoming so much more accessible and it’s helping us build a stable foundation in our communities. It’s important that we can offer healthy, wholesome breads to our community and that we’re able to make it more accessible for everyone. I love being a part of the local food movement as a producer and a consumer.”
”Food Connects helps us reach territories that we currently do not distribute to. We do all of our own deliveries with exception to Food Connects, so we do not deliver very far beyond Southern NH and VT. Food Connects offers us an opportunity to share our products with more people which we love!” And we love working with them!
This incredibly delicious woman-owned business currently has 10 team members. “Our crew is extremely dedicated, and I couldn’t be luckier to have the team I do. We have been in business for about 9 years now and will be celebrating our 10th year next Spring.”
And if you are looking for something new from the Bread Shed, you’re in luck! “We have a newer product that has been exciting and popular. We make pretzels from spent brewers’ grains from local breweries. It’s a great way to reuse a product that otherwise will go to waste and they are amazing! We sell them to restaurants and breweries that freeze them and then bake them off and salt them as needed. They have been very popular and a fun recipe to develop!”