SLOANE SCOTT: Cooking in Nashville since 1992

Dirty Page: Pretzels

photo: Andrea Behrends

Sloane Scott wrote her first cookbook at age 10. This pretzel recipe was part of that collection of family favorites and comes from her great-great grandfather, founder of Bremner Brothers Bakery—it was eventually sold to the National Biscuit Company and now Nabisco.

“That’s the original pretzel recipe, brought forward for modern ingredients,” says Sloane.

A captain in the Union army, her great-great grandfather David Francis Bremner fought battles at Stone’s Ridge in Murfreesboro and led the charge up Missionary Ridge in Chattanooga. After the war, he moved back home to Illinois where, after the Great Chicago Fire in 1871,  he found the last working bakery and began making bread for those who lost their homes. The loaves were branded with his initials “DFB,” earning the nickname around the city as “Damn Fine Bread.” He went on from there to create other crackers and baked goods.

Sloane grew up cooking alongside her mother, grandmother and aunt. She started her first company at age 13 to earn money for a trip to Europe. Called Dinner (“Because that’s all I cooked” she says), the company thrived for seven years and eventually helped put her through college. She worked in the front of the house for some of Chicago’s best restaurateurs—such as Rick Bayless—before coming to Nashville to help revamp The Wildhorse Saloon for Gaylord Opryland. Today, she’s among our city’s leading tech entrepreneurs as a founding partner at Flo Thinkery.

And she still makes her great-great grandfather’s recipe regularly, often sharing it with others. “I will never lose the sense of adventure and spirit that I get from standing in a kitchen and cooking,” Sloane says.