STEVENSVILLE — In Friday’s issue of USA Today, writer Kathy Baruffi named the top 10 artisan bakers in the United States.

As might be expected most were on the east or west coasts and included such famous places as Acme Bread Co. in San Francisco and King Arthur Flour Bakery in Norwich, Vt. And all but two were in major metropolitan areas from New York City to Portland, Ore.

The other exception, besides King Arthur, was the Bit of Swiss Pastry Shoppe in Lincoln Township, which this year is celebrating its 40th anniversary.

Founded and owned for 20 years by Hans and Mary Kottman, the bakery was bought two decades ago by Tim and Pat Foley. The Foleys didn’t change any of Kottman’s recipes for such classics as Sachertorte and Dobosch tort.

But Tim Foley, who more than a decade ago attended a two-week bread baking class in France, has developed his own line of artisan breads. Foley said the crusty, chewy and delicious loaves are designed to replicate the way French breads tasted more than a century ago.

“We enhance the flavor of our breads with good quality flour, starters and pre-ferments,” Foley said. “We don’t rely upon other things, like jalapenos, to give our breads flavor.”

Foley was so entranced with the way the French made their breads that almost a decade ago he installed a 20,000-pound Fringand, a bread oven made in France. He was one of the few U.S. bakers to have such an oven. He now has two, one in Stevensville and another in the Martin’s Supermarket in Granger, Ind., where Bit of Swiss has a bakery.

“We make our bread the French way by respecting the flour,” said Foley, who not only trained in France but had a French bread baker come to Stevensville to teach Bit of Swiss bakers how to use the oven and perfect their breads.

Foley and a team of bakers won the coveted Coupe du Monde de la Boulangerie – the World Cup of Baking – several years ago. He baked more than 8,000 baguettes to train for the competition.

Now Foley travels the world teaching others how to bake artisan breads. Last year he taught 34 bread baking seminars in 42 days in Japan. This year he did a week-long seminar in San Francisco. This summer he was in Traverse City for Epicurean Event, a nationwide food show.

He was recently at the General Mills headquarters in Minneapolis to help train the team that will compete in the 2008 Coupe du Monde de la Boulangerie. In addition, Foley spent a week at Club Med in the Bahamas teaching bread baking techniques.

If a week at Club Med sounds glamorous, for the most part bread baking – and owning a bakery – is hard work. Foley is up at 2:30 a.m. most days so he can be at the bakery by 3.

He said he is lucky because he has five dedicated bread bakers working for him, including Tepe Hernandez who used to work in the San Francisco Bay area and now is head baker at the Granger store. Vinny Casiciotta, the head baker at Bit of Swiss, has worked in New York and at the renowned Zingerman’s in Ann Arbor.

Foley is proud of his bread’s purity.

“There are many bakeries that only need an oven to be in business because there is so much premade stuff out there,” he said, noting that several weeks ago he was looking at a bakery loaf of honey wheat bread and noticed there was no honey in the bread, just corn syrup. “We use expensive and good ingredients, and I think people appreciate that we do.”

Reprinted with permission from The Herald-Palladium