The Drifter Behind Some of the Best Bread in the Adirondacks
ELIZABETHTOWN - I had been buying The Drifter’s Loaf delicious sourdough for some time when I met Courtney Marvin, the baker behind some of the best bread in the Adirondacks. It was at one of the Thursday-night farmer’s markets at Ausable Brewing.
I felt like I was meeting a rock star, which Courtney kind of is in these parts. Not because she’s flamboyant but because people revere her work.
We talked about the bagels she was currently selling along with her sourdough and focaccia. She explained that they are a work in progress, that she wants to get into making bagels but was unsure, given her geographical location, if they should be more like New York City bagels or Montreal style. In other words, should they be savory, soft and chewy with a shiny glazed crust a la NYC? Or denser and sweet with a large hole and a dark exterior like they make up north?
The bagel I tried was actually a bit of both: its shell and interior reminiscent of the best of the Big Apple but with a sweetness that came from being poached in honey water instead of malt. It was delicious.
But enough about bagels for now. Let’s talk about her bread.
Some of the Best Bread in the Adirondacks
If you’ve tried Courtney’s country loaf you know how good it is. If not, imagine a dark, crackling, chocolate-brown crust, an inviting aroma, and a tan, tender-chewy interior with just a slight tang.
The Country loaf has a dark, toasty exterior with a tender, just slightly tangy interior.
Because she doesn’t call her bread sourdough — her main loaves are called Country, Seeded, Honey Oat, and Ancient Grain — and because her sourdough does not look like the whiter, webbier San Francisco-style sourdough, marketgoers will sometimes bypass her bread saying they're looking for sourdough. Says Courtney: “I’m like, ‘Come back! This is sourdough!’ ”
Locally grown, organic, stone-milled flour gives Courtney’s sourdough its tan color and deep flavor.
In fact, her sourdough loaves more closely resemble what you find at Poilâne, the famous bread bakery in Paris. The tan color is due to her choice of flour, most of which comes from New York via Farmer Ground Flour. Made from organically grown, stone-milled, whole grains, the flour, though fine and powdery, is a bit darker than industrial roll-milled flour. It also has a nuttier, more complex flavor (and is more nutritious, too).
Sesame and sunflower seeds coat loaves about to be scored by Courtney.
For how sought-after The Drifter’s Loaf is, you might be surprised to learn that Courtney, for now, makes each loaf herself.
When I visited her in the kitchen that she rents from Counter Space in Elizabethtown, she had just set a personal record, baking off 330 pieces the previous Friday.
She sells her bread wholesale to local farm stores and markets as well as directly to the public at various farmers’ markets.
Restaurants like the nearby Deer’s Head Inn feature her bread on the menu, and the bakery at Counter Space serves toasted slices of her County loaf at breakfast and uses her crackly crusted baguettes for sandwiches.
That record-breaking week, there was also a large order placed by a camp that pressed her schedule and her space.
Baking bread in general, and sourdough specifically, takes time. In Courtney’s case, about three days.
It begins with a starter. Courtney estimates her starter to be about 10 years old. What began as a dehydrated culture from Italy has since evolved into her own creation that she nurtures carefully. She combines her starter with other ingredients (flour, water, salt) in a mixer large enough to hold 60 loaves worth of dough.
The dough then needs to bulk ferment during which time it’s occasionally stretched and folded. Next the dough gets portioned and shaped before resting. The final step is scoring and baking, which she staggers because her two ovens can only fit 15 loaves each.
These are just the broad strokes of Courtney’s craft. There are many more processes and sub steps involved, such as feeding the starter, adding scalded rye to the country loaf dough for a bit of sweetness and a longer shelf life, or soaking the flax, sesame, and sunflower seeds that she adds to her seeded loaf dough.
A Wanderer Returns Home
Courtney grew up in Elizabethtown along with her identical twin sister. She went to college in New Hampshire and then headed west to Colorado where she worked in adventure education therapy, leading hikes and rafting rides among other outdoor pursuits. She came home briefly and headed indoors to work for Dogwood Bread Bakery in Wadhams, which is currently on hiatus. She moved back to Colorado where, during COVID, she baked bread at Blue Grouse Bread. There she perfected her skills and learned all about the wholesale bread business.
Among Courtney’s many tattoos: a shaft of wheat by her tattoo-artist brother -in-law who also leases space at Counter Space.
When her sister, who now lives in Westport, had kids, Courtney decided to come back east to be closer to her family. She first leased space next to the former Old Mountain Coffee Co. bakery in Keene Valley. In the winter of 2026 she moved to the newly opened Counter Space, where her brother-in-law, a risk-management consultant and tattoo artist who gave her the wheat shaft tattoo on her forearm, also leases space.
Time to make the bread.
Along with her two professional ovens and her industrial mixer, Courtney’s kitchen at Counter Space has a high cathedral ceiling and a large window that lets in plenty of natural sunlight.
But when Courtney arrives on Friday mornings to bake for the weekend, she can only see nighttime stars twinkling as it’s pitch dark when she gets there at 1:00 a.m. By the time I show up seven hours later to visit with her, there are scores of toasty smelling sourdough loaves cooling on metal racks.
Meanwhile, Courtney, wearing an Adidas t-shirt, flour-colored pants, and a baseball cap to keep her shoulder-length hair back, is busy shaping baguettes.
She’s so practiced that she can keep up her end of the conversation as she handles the baguette dough, adds loaves of sourdough to the oven, and transfers the steaming baked bread to cooling racks. Small with an athletic build, it’s clear she benefited from her earlier physically demanding career as she makes lifting the heavy baking sheets look easy.
During the busy season of summer and fall, Courtney works six long days a week. I ask her if she has any help. “Just my angels,” she replies. She’s referring to her mother who works the Keene Valley Farmers’ Market on Sundays and to her delivery driver who happens to be her grandmother’s neighbor (and owner of the Namaste Inn in E-Town). “I could not do it without them,” she says.
Scored loaves of Ancient Grain bake in pans because the spelt-flour used in it has a fragile gluten structure that needs support.
So when does she sleep? “In winter,” she jokes. More seriously she adds that the winter is indeed too slow as farmers’ markets wind down and demand at restaurants and cafes wanes.
Which brings us back to those bagels she’s been experimenting with. She and Connor Stone, owner of the beloved Keeseville-based Cornerstone Pizza are currently mulling the idea of going in together on a bagel business.
Details are still being worked out, but hopefully some delicious bagels are coming to the ADK soon.
Because she works solo, Courtney’s mastered multi-tasking, shaping baguettes (in back) while baking in batches.
What’s in a name?
Given that Courtney launched her business only after returning home to the Adirondacks, why did she call her company The Drifter’s Loaf? “A lot of cool names had already been taken,” she admits with a sheepish smile.
She thought about her love of travel and being outdoors. She toyed with something like Dirtbag Baking, as the term dirtbag can refer to people, especially rock climbers, who reject norms and tend to live in tents or cars in order to follow their passion. But her father vetoed that one — a wise move given the word’s more nefarious connotations.
Instead, The Drifter's Loaf honors her going back and forth from her home in the Adirondacks to Colorado as well as her love of travel. It also means that no matter where she goes, she takes her passion for baking bread with her. That passion, she says, is what keeps her rooted.
Let’s just hope those roots continue to spread here.
Based in Elizabethtown, The Drifter’s Loaf supplies bread to markets, farm stores, restaurants and other businesses throughout the Adirondacks, including Counter Space, which sells slices of toasted Country and uses Courtney’s baguettes for sandwiches.
WHERE TO BUY THE DRIFTER’S LOAF
You can buy The Drifter’s Loaf breads directly at the Keene Valley and Elizabethtown farmers’ markets as well as at Green Goddess Natural Market in Saranac Lake, Sugar House Creamery in Upper Jay, Cedar Run Bakery in Keene, and the Essex Farm Store in Essex.
GOOD TO KNOW
Courtney is in the process of changing her logo; her new logo is on her Instagram profile.
Those interested in wholesale opportunities can reach her at thedriftersloaf@gmail.com
August 2026