Best bread bakery 

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• Courtesy of August First
• August First

August First — Phil Merrick and Jodi Whalen opened shop on August 1, 2009; in 2022, they sold the biz to chef Frank Pace and his wife, Marnie Long. From seven grain to seeded baguette, these European-style loaves are baked with love.

Other Finalists (Inside Chittenden County)

• Great Harvest Bread Co.
• Klinger's Bread Company
• O Bread Bakery
• Trent's Bread

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• Jeb Wallace-Brodeur
• Randy George and Eliza Cain

Red Hen Baking Co. — Soon after Red Hen Baking's husband-and-wife co-owners, Randy George and Eliza Cain, moved their bread bakery to Middlesex from its original Duxbury location in 2007, they added pastries. When customers started asking for lunch, George recalled, "I thought, We've got bread. I guess we can put some things on it."

Red Hen's long-fermented breads include airy ciabatta, crisp-crusted baguettes and hearty loaves of Mad River Grain. They are made almost entirely with freshly milled, organic regional grain, 20 percent of which is milled on-site.

The bread is sold throughout Vermont and at New Hampshire's Upper Valley co-op stores. For pastries and sandwiches, head to the bakery, where the daily rotation of sweets might include seasonal strawberry-rhubarb Danish, flaky almond croissants or a nutty buckwheat coconut chocolate chip cookie — which happens to be made without wheat flour.

Sandwiches range from the classic jambon beurre on baguette to a soul-satisfying, grilled mushroom Reuben loaded with sauerkraut and Swiss cheese on Alice's Rye. You won't even consider leaving the crusts.

Other Finalists (Outside Chittenden County)

• Elmore Mountain Bread
• The Manghis' Bread
• Red House Sweets
• Two Sons Bakehouse