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Overnight success for French-born Pleasant View baker




Emilie Frances Foote of Pleasant View quickly sells out of her home-baked goods on Saturdays at La Belle Naturelle. Here she poses with a few items remaining after about 40 packages including loaves of sourdough bread, bags of buns, and tins of cinnamon rolls were sold in the first half-hour the shop was open.SEAN BARRY

Emilie Frances Foote of Pleasant View quickly sells out of her home-baked goods on Saturdays at La Belle Naturelle. Here she poses with a few items remaining after about 40 packages including loaves of sourdough bread, bags of buns, and tins of cinnamon rolls were sold in the first half-hour the shop was open.SEAN BARRY

Emilie Frances Foote took the long way to Pleasant View. But once she arrived, it did not take her long to become well known.

“When people hear that French people are baking bread, they want to try it out,” said Foote, who was born and raised in southern France near the border with Spain.

She spoke as her baked goods were quickly selling out last Saturday at La Belle Naturelle, the Pleasant View skin care products store owned by another French native, Anna DiCarlo.

The store opened at 10 a.m., and in less than an hour all of Foote’s sourdough loaves, bags of buns, and tins of cinnamon rolls had sold out — 44 packages in all.

Foote sells her all-natural baked goods every Saturday at the store. She also takes special orders, and she supplies Little Gourmand in Nashville five days a week.

She gets started at 2 a.m. on her work days — Tuesday through Saturday — and bakes from her Pleasant View home. Her culinary creations are ready for customers later in the morning, fresh as can be.

One of the loaves of French bread baked by Emilie Frances Foote of Pleasant View.

One of the loaves of French bread baked by Emilie Frances Foote of Pleasant View.

Her husband handles the Saturday deliveries to Nashville so she can sell to customers at La Belle Naturelle.

Foote’s success in Tennessee is rather sudden. She and her husband moved to the area from Arizona just three months ago, first renting a condo in Nashville and later buying a house in Pleasant View.

Everything fell into place almost immediately upon her arrival — meeting French-born DiCarlo, establishing ties with Little Gourmand’s owners, finding the Pleasant View house and installing a bread oven, shipped from Belgium, in her kitchen.

A steady stream of Pleasant View area residents chatted it up with her last Saturday as they shopped at La Belle Naturelle. One customer spoke with her in French. Another shared her travel experience in Paris.

“I don’t know what I did in this world to deserve this, but it’s wonderful,” Foote said, noting that she has been selling at La Belle Naturelle for only six or seven weeks.

Foote and her mother moved from France to the United States in 2013, settling in Arizona because they had relatives there.

Foote, who was born Emilie Frances, got married in Arizona to an American-born man from Iowa. The couple lived just outside Phoenix and had not even been to Tennessee until they decided to vacation here last summer.

There was much to like about the Phoenix area but also negatives such as brutally hot summers and rapid urbanization that saw beautiful desert replaced nonstop by housing and commercial developments, Foote said.

So, the couple made the move to Tennessee. And they are definitely in the right place, said Foote, who operates her business as Chef Emilie LLC.

“I felt a connection right away,” she said. “It’s amazing. I love it here.”

Foote owned a deli in Arizona and worked as a restaurant pastry chef, among many other endeavors. As a child, in the French tradition, she learned from her parents and grandparents how to cook all kinds of foods from scratch.

“It’s a French thing,” she said with her characteristic smile.

She makes a variety of baked goods, so the selection in Pleasant View and Nashville often changes from week to week.

“I bake whatever I want,” she said. “Whatever I feel like. I get to be creative.”

Although she enjoys all sorts of cooking, it is baking in particular that she realized is her first love in the culinary world.

So, when she and her husband moved to Tennessee, she had a plan.

More than that, she had the determination to carry it out.

“I told my husband, I don’t want to look for a job,” she said. “I don’t want to work for anyone. I just want to be baking bread from home, and I’m going to make that happen.”

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