Organic certification a matter of personal pride for local baker
ASHLEY PARRISH World Scene Writer
09/01/2004
Tulsa World (Final Home Edition), Page D1 of Food

Tom Farrell was using a different set of bowls for his whole-wheat Levain loaf long before inspectors came in to make sure.

And long before someone told him that he must use pecans grown without any pesticides, in soil that has been absolutely untouched by chemicals for years, he did. In fact, he called his business FARRELL FAMILY ORGANIC Bread.

But he didn't have that piece of paper. The one that truly made him organic.

Now he does.

With rigorous inspections, to make sure his equipment was compatible, to make sure his wheat, his eggs, his dairy and even his fruit come from fields just as rigorously and meticulously tested, the Oklahoma Department of Agriculture, Food and Forestry made Farrell one of the only -- if not the only -- organic baker in Oklahoma.

But if he was doing everything anyway, why go through the hassle?

"Because it matters to me," he says simply.

Standing in the middle of his bakery at 81st Street and Yale Avenue, with the roar of the ovens and the smell of wild yeast and flour, listening to him talk about the diseases plaguing the population, about the chemicals building up in the environment, even in the human body, it starts to matter to you, too.

It has to taste good, too

"Seventy-five percent of customers don't care if my bread is organic," he says. And he doesn't mind that.

When customers come in and Farrell breaks off a crusty hunk of sourdough for them to taste, they close their eyes and sigh and call it the best bread they've ever eaten.

He makes good bread, great bread, first and foremost.

But those who care if it's organic, really care if it's organic.

They're cancer patients. They're people who have had health scares. People who seem to feel a connection to their environment and their bodies a little deeper.

"Sometimes it doesn't become an issue until health becomes an issue," Farrell says.

These people say they can feel a difference, though, and Farrell thinks he can, too.

And everyone else?

"People don't know how much better it tastes and how much better it will make them feel," he says.

Making bread this way "is true to what it's always been," he says, and people have been baking this way for thousands of years.

A local connection

He calls about 4 o'clock, days after the interview in his bakery.

"I thought of something," he says, "something that might be important.

"I found a farmer near Lawton who grows organic wheat."

So instead of getting his grain from some random spot on the map, he can help an Oklahoma farmer continue growing organic -- a risky proposition, to be sure, in a culture that is rarely kind to farmers anyway.

Now he'd like to buy fruits and nuts locally.

But until he can, he likes knowing that produce and nuts grown organically seem to be handled with a little more care.

If farmers are going to take the time, spend the money and invest so much of themselves in the growing of a product, they're probably going to care enough to ship it fresh.

"A lot more care goes into their products. The pecans aren't stored in hot warehouses for months," Farrell says. "They're vacuum-packed and kept refrigerated. So not only do we find it healthier, but a lot of people want to buy organic because it tastes good."

Organic makes a better baguette, a better sourdough and a better whole-grain Levain.

"It matters to me," he says. "Bread is supposed to be healthy. But a healthy bread full of pesticides is not really a healthy bread."

Ashley Parrish 581-8318
ashley.parrish@tulsaworld.com