The Good Table | written by: PAMELA DEY VOSSLER
Rob VanKeuren with Flour Water Salt Head Baker Samantha Valenti, Opening day, November 2018 / / all photographs courtesy: Peter Wynn Thompson
In hindsight, the breadcrumbs appear, clear as day, marking the path we’ve taken …through serendipity, our actions or, more often than not, some combination of the two. Funny how those crumbs are so frequently nearly invisible—or, at best, scattered, during the real-time moments they appear before us.
To look at Darien native Rob VanKeuren’s path to opening Flour Water Salt Bread in Grove Street Plaza in 2018 and building it into the booming business it is today, poised to expand thanks to the insatiable demand for his artisan sourdough bread and dazzling baked goods (both sweet and savory), is to understand this at its most elemental.
He was an economics major at Ohio Wesleyan, for goodness sakes, who went to Merrill Lynch and the floor of the New York Stock Exchange after graduation then a string of other finance shops where he traded “all kinds of weird stuff that you don’t hear about on CNBC,” as he says.
It is a path that includes getting bounced from a sales job that everyone (including Rob) knew was extraordinarily unsuited to his gifts, a trip to India he almost didn’t take, a book about baking bread he stumbled upon around the same time and a realization that he wanted to “write a
better story” for his life than the one before him …at nearly 35 years old. And it is as authentic as it is gutsy.
In the bouncing, he realized he didn’t want to return to finance.
In India he learned to let go. “In the West, there’s this feeling of control. You set your course and do it,” said Rob. “The reality is there are a lot of different currents in the world and you can set an intention and you can work toward it but you can’t really map everything,” he continued.
Left: Kouign-Amann (pronounced “queen-a-mon”); a melt-in-your mouth salted caramel croissant muffin. Right: Rob with Jordan Miller, one of Rob’s Instagram mentors and owner of the massive Sonoma Bakery in New South Wales, Australia.
With the book, Tartine Bread by Chad Robertson, he turned a hobby for making sourdough pizza in his apartment into a serious commitment to perfect his breadmaking skills. It was also a way to channel a love of cooking and caring for others through feeding them that dated back to growing up in a foodie family, and making dinner regularly for 60 at his fraternity during college—simply because he wanted to.
In writing a better story, he returned to square one, giving his intentions a big boost as he donned an apron and went to work for Frank Lombardi at his Trattoria in the Georgetown section of Wilton, exchanging a couple nights a week spinning pizzas for bread-baking time in Frank’s massive wood-fired oven. Over the next five years, he honed his breadmaking craft and taught himself to make pastries. It was the start of Flour Water Salt Bread. In the process, through the Instagram following he was building @flourwatersaltbread (now with 16,000 followers), he discovered a community of bakers from around the world eager to help each other perfect their skills.
The more Rob baked, the more he sold, at first to friends, then to just about everyone who tasted the bread or heard about it, including Bill Taibe of Wesport’s The Whelk and Don Memo restaurants, his first wholesale customer.
In 2017, he left Lombardi’s to take Flour Water Salt Bread to the next level working out of the historic GreyBarns Inn in Norwalk, CT. In 2018, Neat founder Rachel Haughey, who had tried his bread and loved it, introduced him to her landlord, local developer Penny Glassmeyer, in hopes he would settle his business in space of his own, next door to her.
Left: Adding freshly baked ham and gruyere turnovers to the day’s offerings. Right: Opening day, November 2018
Sensing his authenticity, seeing how hard he works, the standard to which he holds himself and tasting the incredible baked goods he produced, Penny made it her mission to set him up in business. From build out to opening in 2018, it was a barely fathomable two months, thanks to Penny’s famous efficiency, tenacity and loyal team of workers.
“Penny is truly an angel sent from heaven,” said Rob of all Penny did for him, including her investment in the equipment he needed to get his business up and running in the space he still rents from her. “She gave me hope when I needed it and she made everything happen behind the scenes. I am eternally grateful to her,” he added.
\On opening day, with his wife Paige, seven months pregnant, on standby to help with the register as she set up her computer for work for her real job at a table in the new space, and a childhood friend who’d volunteered to pitch in as well, they readied themselves for whatever might come their way. They sold out in 45 minutes.
Breadcrumbs become loaves become a business. Especially with a head baker like Samantha Valenti who joined Rob in 2019.
“She’s an absolute rock star,” said Rob who credits Samantha with using her Johnson and Wales education and deep skills to “turbo charge our business,” as he says.
Now with 15 employees and plans to expand to surrounding towns, no one who’s been to Flour Water Salt Bread can imagine Darien without it. It’s a staple, an indulgence, a signature eatery in our town … and proof of just how much life we find when we chase our dreams.
