Do a Google search for the Dutch Oven Bakery, and you’ll find yourself staring at rave reviews from customers both local and distant. It’s a unique place; the kind of rural discovery that welcomes you with chickens in the yard and incredible smells coming out of the kitchen when sourdough bread or pound cake is on the day’s baking schedule. 

For more than 20 years — the last 17 at its current location just across the Morgan County line — the Dutch Oven has been growing as fast as its small staff, under the ownership of Lowell Brenneman, can bake. From a small start in the 1990s at a house-sized location near Jones Chapel to today’s 9,000 square-foot warehouse, the bakery has lured people with its signature bread and cakes, along the way adding an ever-expanding assortment of pastries, cookies, confections and deli offerings that people can’t seem to get enough of.

“We try to make a good product, and I think we do have a unique store,” says Brenneman. “It’s not the kind of thing you’re going to find just anywhere. That’s probably why, when people come here for the first time, that it stands out to them. It’s unique in that respect.”

Brenneman, who grew up on a dairy farm near Montezuma, Georgia, moved to the Cullman area in the mid-1990s with his family to join the local outreach work of the Emmanuel Mennonite Church at Massey. He didn’t have much baking experience, but his sister, Ellen Brenneman, did. With her expertise, the bakery grew — and Lowell learned a lot along the way.

“I really didn’t know much about it in the beginning,” he says. “My sister had some more experience, and she came over and helped, and has been with us from the beginning and is still here. She’s the one who knew what she was doing. It started out on a lot smaller scale — but as we grew, we took things and put them on a bigger scale.”

That scale has grown to encompass branded items from other suppliers that fit in with the bakery’s theme of simply made, authentically delicious food. In-house, the Dutch Oven makes and sells baked goods, jams, fudge and other candies, and operates a deli where you can pick up a quick sandwich. Beyond that, the store has grown to offer coffee, grains, leather goods, cooking supplies and a whole array of dried, fried, candied and pickled foods — anything, really, that complements the products it makes on site.

You can even buy chickens — and their eggs.

The store evangelizes the family’s faith more by its example than by its overt messaging to customers: God gave us these gifts, it seems to say, and this is our best effort at using them in His service.

“The important thing,” says Brenneman, “is that our life matches what we teach; that it matches the Word of God. We can speak all we want, but it’s a matter of how the Lord has really blessed us. The way this business has grown is a blessing from the Lord — and he’s good to us whether we grow or not — and we want God to be glorified; and to be a part of all that we do.”

Closed Sundays and Mondays, the Dutch Oven is open Tuesday through Saturday from 8:30 a.m. until 5 p.m. From Labor Day on, the shopping season gets busy. 

“It varies some, but we usually have our open house the first weekend after Labor Day,” says Brenneman. “I kind of consider that, from there on through Christmas, the busy part of our year. During open house, we open up in the back and customers can come in and sample different items, and we run a lot of specials. It’s usually a two-day event. And then the Christmas season begins, and December is by far our biggest month.”

To visit the Dutch Oven Bakery, take Alabama Highway 157 west from Cullman past West Point, Battleground, and down the hill until you reach Evergreen Road (on the right), where the bakery will be just a short distance further on your left.

To find the bakery using your mobile device, do a map search of its address by entering 1205 Evergreen Rd., Falkville, AL 35622. You can also call the Dutch Oven at 256-462-3988.

This story first appeared in the summer edition of Cullman Magazine.

1205 Evergreen Rd., Falkville

Tuesday-Saturday, 8:30 a.m. until 5 p.m.

Specialities include homemade sourdough bread, pound cakes, candies, deli selections, chickens, eggs, cooking supplies and more.

To find the bakery using a mobile device, do a map search of its address by entering 1205 Evergreen Rd., Falkville, AL 35622.

Phone the Dutch Oven at 256-462-3988.