Brian Noyes brings his experience as an art director to the kneading board.

It started as a little friendly bake-off competition between Brian Noyes, then a publication director living in California, and his uncle in Florida. But it stirred up a passion for baking that would lead Noyes to pursue formal training and a second career in fine pastries and baked goods.

This is how it worked: Noyes and his uncle would send homemade baked goods to one another, including the recipes with each shipment. When Noyes would open his package from his uncle, not only would he find cookies and the corresponding recipe, but he would also rediscover the recipe he had sent his uncle before, now covered in red ink with his uncle’s recommendations for improvements. Years later, when Noyes moved to Florida to be the art director of Tampa Magazine, he and his uncle developed a recipe for honey whole-wheat bread that is now a customer favorite at Noyes’s new enterprise, Red Truck Bakery. “It drove my aunt crazy,” he recalls. “She had to clean up all the messes we made in the kitchen.”

Art and Food Intertwined

Brian Noyes launched Red Truck Bakery as he shifted gears from being an art director for publications such as SmithsonianMagazine, Preservation, and House & Garden to being a farm owner and baker in Orlean, Virginia. “I think every art director wants to design something for himself,” Noyes says. “This business is my chance to do that.” Noyes has been working out of his farmhouse kitchen and selling via mail order and at select area stores for two and a half years, but the new storefront in Old Town Warrenton will allow him to increase production, variety, and availability of his artisanal products.

The red truck logo is Noyes’s own design, inspired by his love for red antique farm trucks. When he and his buddy Dwight McNeill purchased a small farm in Fauquier County, Noyes began looking for the perfect truck online. He found a great deal on consignment in New York. Not until Noyes showed genuine interest in the truck did he discover who its owner was: fashion designer Tommy Hilfiger. After Noyes purchased the truck, he received a personal note from Hilfiger with anecdotes about the truck.

The bakery’s signature red truck, which Noyes uses for local deliveries and events, will be parked outside the bakery on Waterloo Street in Old Town Warrenton, wonderfully symbolizing the bakery’s origin on Noyes’s Orlean farm, his close ties to local agriculture, and the building’s original manifestation— an Esso filling station circa 1921. “Half the fun is in the packaging and marketing,” he says, noting the confluence of his present career and his experience as an art director.

The other half of the fun, of course, is in the baking. Noyes’s artisanal breads and pastries are enough to make even the strictest carb counters swoon. Noyes trained at the prestigious Culinary Institute of America twice, specializing in pastries and in café, artisan, hearth, and specialty breads. He also trained at L’Academie de Cuisine near Washington, D.C.

Artisanal Defined

If you are not near Warrenton, you can order Red Truck baked goods online or find them at more than 15 stores and wineries throughout the region. A list is at the Red Truck website.

When asked what distinguishes an artisanal bread, Noyes explains that his breads are hand-crafted in a European style. “It takes time to get the flavor,” he says, explaining why he will not use any accelerants or conditioners—chemicals which speed up the rising process and create smooth and uniform textures—in his breads.

“Good bubbling yeast breads ferment for days. You can watch the bread dough live and move. When you put it in the oven, that life becomes the streaks and holes— that’s where all the flavor hides.” He also pledges not to use any pre-packaged fruit fillings in any of his products, opting instead for seasonal and local goods. “We live in the middle of some fertile farmland here. I want to take advantage of that,” Noyes explains. “I make a pretty darn good cherry pie, using what’s fresh at farmers markets or from my own trees. When it’s gone, it’s gone.”

In addition to offering customers’ year-round favorites—foccacia, harvest wheat bread, and rum cake—Red Truck Bakery sells sandwiches and soups influenced by the local bounty. A large common table is situated in what was formerly the garage area of the service station. Here customers can meet for coffee, pastries, and lunch fare. Noyes also carries other local artisanal products including honey, Virginia Chutney made in Rappahannock, hot pepper jelly from near Newport News, cheeses from Everona Dairy in Rapidan, and Virginia peanuts. “I am open to having more local foods available,”
says Noyes. “I want to know who grew the peaches, have him come in, give him a piece of pie.”

Striving for Sustainability

Using local foods is perhaps the first but certainly not the only green aspect of Red Truck Bakery. Noyes has gone the extra mile to try to make environmentally sound choices in all aspects of the business. He and his new five-person staff will provide biodegradable forks and knives, recycled and recyclable coffee cups, and unbleached bags and napkins. The bakery will not use plastic bags or non-recyclable clamshell-style packaging, and it will offer discounts for reusing thermoses. “It’s been a little bit of work to search out alternatives to plastic, and my distributor looked at me like I was crazy when I asked for unbleached napkins, but they’re out there,” Noyes says. He is even opting for renewable energy in his Warrenton store through Dominion Power. “I want to be as green as possible, as local as possible, and as friendly as possible,” Noyes vows. Now that’s a good recipe for a rising business.

Trista Scheuerlein is program director of the Headwaters’ Farm-to-Table Program at Rappahannock County Public Schools. She has worked on several small-scale farms and with agriculture-related NGOs from Virginia to Oregon and Chile. She earned her bachelor’s degree in English with minors in biology and sustainable development from Appalachian State University.

Red Truck Bakery & Market
22 Waterloo Street at Courthouse Square,
Old Town Warrenton
(previously the home of Mom’s Apple Pie Co.)
(540) 347-2224
www.redtruckbakery.com

If you are not near Warrenton, you can order Red Truck baked goods online or find them at more than 15 stores and wineries throughout the region. A list is at the Red Truck website.