By Alana Chernila
Photo above by Eric Korenman
If you’re reading this on a Thursday, then it’s safe to say I am in a good mood. Also known as bread day in my household, Thursday has become my favorite day of the week. It’s go-time for Sarah Reynolds North and her bakery, Found Bread. She’s been up since the early hours of the morning baking loaves for the 80 or so members of her bread club before packing them up to distribute to various pickup locations.
Here’s how it works: each month, members get an invitation to opt in for the weeks ahead. They can sign up and pay upfront for a four- or eight-week run. There are also bread choices—all sourdough (with one hearty, wheat-free loaf), made with regionally grown, fresh-milled flour and high-quality organic ingredients—made with food sourced as close to home as possible. There is a “family loaf” share if you’re dreaming of that classic sourdough boule, or the “baker’s choice,” which is where I always fall. Will it be the Pepperell with its rich Gruyère and black pepper? The golden raisin and cinnamon-flecked Sultana? Or the seed-packed Sedgewick? Whichever it is, I know at least half will be gone by bedtime, slathered in the good butter I buy special for the occasion, dipped in whatever soup or salad I have planned to give us a reason to call the better part of a loaf of bread “dinner.”
I pick up my bread share at Bon Dimanche in Great Barrington, one of several local pickup options in the area. If I get there on the early side, my loaf is often still warm, tucked in its hand-stamped paper bag with my name on it. I inevitably see friends there, and we share that smile that says it all—we are part of something so good, and so delicious.
North and her partner, Hollis, moved from Boston to Mill River with their three children in 2022. Their house came with a tiny, one-room building rumored to have once been the town post office. Now the walls of the small, bright space are a cheery pale pink, with a commercial oven, big refrigerator, and wide baking table. The bakery is just a few feet from the front door of the family home, and this means that their three young kids can come and go as they please.
North grew up baking with her mother, and baking bread became a ritual she took with her into adulthood. After three years in the Peace Corps in Guatemala, she worked with immigrant communities in the South with the Southern Poverty Law Center, and later moved into public radio journalism, all the while baking bread. When her partner, who worked in tech, got a six-month assignment in San Francisco, North took advantage and signed up for an artisan sourdough class at the San Francisco Baking Institute.
“That changed everything,” she says. “This bread thing I loved all along felt like it could be the thing that I do.” The couple returned to the East Coast and Found Bread was born—“found” as in the discovery of an old way of making with time and fermentation, finding what you love. They imagined they’d have a bakery one day, full of things that were “found.” It would be years before they’d move to the Berkshires, but North dug in and worked at bakeries everywhere they lived over the next several years—London, Cape Cod, Vermont, Boston—and ran bread clubs.
The structure of the bread club is similar to the Community Supported Agriculture (CSA) model, where people buy a farm share ahead of time and then reap the rewards throughout the season. “That supports the farm,” North tells me, “and, in turn, your community. You’re paying forward for delicious, happily grown food. And you know who made it.” These models also help farmers plan their seasons efficiently and with minimal waste. Working on the same premise, North can purchase her ingredients and bake loaves in the exact quantity she knows she’ll need each month.
The bakery is too small for customers to mill about, but North plans to turn it into a take-away spot. Even with the dream of a Found Bread space that is more open to the public, the bread club isn’t going anywhere. “The bread club is the heart of our bakery,” North assures me, as she rolls a shaped ball of dough into a bowl of black sesame seeds. “People like to feel like they’re part of something. And the opportunity to make something delicious that brings people around a table, that builds community, is so satisfying to me.”
