blog
It’s like a bread recipe - bring a wide variety of ingredients together and create something way better than the individual parts.
You’ll find riffs on community and connection, musings on baking and fermentation, reflections on travel experiences and much more.
When people find out you are a baker and you have a podcast, strange things start to happen. Often it starts as a question: “You know who you should talk to?”
That happened a few weeks ago when my new friend Gillian told me about her friend Elizabeth Belkind. All she told me was that Elizabeth was a pastry chef and owner of a place called Cake Monkey.
Read MoreWhen Amber moved to Skowhegan, Maine, her new community needed help. She dug in with the community, discovered the many assets they had and eventually formed the Maine Grain Alliance (organizers of the renowned Kneading Conference) and started the Maine Grains mill too.
Now, Skowhegan is known around the world as a community that turned itself around by embracing their history as a grain producer.
Read MoreTo those of us who love baking school, Mac McConnell was best known as the Artisan Bread instructor at the San Francisco Baking Institute. (You can see him in action here.) But these days he’s rocking out the bread and pastries at his own bakery, The Midwife and the Baker in Mountain View, California.
Read MoreWhat would tempt two young bakers to leave good jobs at a famous (to the family) bakery in the hotbed of North American sourdough bread? To move way cross country to bring the Good Stuff to a small town in Michigan? I just had to find out.
Read MoreI’m so glad that my first ever Australian guest is John Reid, owner and baker of Redbeard Historic Bakery in Trentham, Victoria. He’s been recommended as “someone to talk to” from several bakers across North America and as far as Ireland.
Little did I know that I’d been wanting to talk to John for a long time too!
Read MoreRosie Gray is getting baking experience by seeking out that awesome network of bakers all over Scotland, England and into Europe too. These days, she’s working at a brick oven bakery in Genk, Belgium.
Oh yeah, and she’s getting from bakery to bakery on a bike. How cool is that?
Read MoreEmily Cayer is bringing a lifetime of wildlife conservation and a love of nature to the baking community, through her new collaborative venture, We Knead Nature. She is organizing farmers, millers, bakers and brewers to ensure we are all giving back to the source of our great grains, nature itself.
Read MoreThis week I talk to Blair Marvin and Andrew Heyn. Their contributions to their community and the baking world at large are a true inspiration. Pairing a bakery with a stone mill company, Blair and Andrew have two important links in a stellar local food chain that includes everyone from the farmers that grow their grain to the quarry men who cut the massive millstones in Andrew’s mills.
Read MoreWhen did you last sit down and really think about what you want to make vs. what your customers want to buy? What is the First Impression you are leaving with people when they come in your place?
When everything is in alignment, owning a bakery of any size is fantastic. But when you and your customers are misaligned, it can be frustrating and costly.
Read MoreLisa Somerville proves that persistence pays off. While working as a waitress, she kept on asking questions until her chef hired her in the kitchen. And her ongoing curiosity kept her moving to new restaurants and elegant country hotels.
But there’s a special attraction to doing your own thing and in 2010 Lisa and her husband opened Vintage Baking Company in Glen, New Hampshire, right in the heart of the White Mountains.
Read MoreMitch Stamm has had a wide ranging and extremely interesting career as a cook, baker and teacher and is still going strong. In this fun, meandering conversation, we talk about growing up in Alabama, cooking in Colorado, learning at Zingerman’s in Michigan, teaching in Rhode Island and more.
Read MoreDavid was brought up with the idea that “money flows.” It comes in, it goes out. That’s the nature of life. While you have it, use it.
Read MoreIf selling means manipulating the conversation so you buy something you don’t want or need, then actually, I HATE selling.
But I’m learning that selling isn’t about manipulation. It’s not about closing or conversion or squeeze pages either.
Read MoreI am back from Montreal and my head is swimming. Not only did I have an awesome weekend in a beautiful city, eating my way through every boulangerie, brasserie, marche and cafe that I could find, I had the best day ever at A Taste For Grain, the annual grain gathering put on by a great group of bakers and grain heads.
Read MoreWhen I was at WheatStalk last year, I kept seeing this tall, slim baker with a great bushy beard. Even though we weren’t in a class together he kept popping up all over the conference.
Then, when I got home, my Instagram feed kept recommending a bakery in New York called L’Imprimerie, with a logo featuring that same bushy beard. Was this “Monsieur Gus” the same baker? Yup!
Read MoreWe all admire the Big Leaps. Quitting your job to sail around the world. Going 100% Vegan all at once. Getting off the couch and running a marathon.
But I'm a fan of the little leaps. Small steps. The next small stretch.
Read MoreJennifer Lapidus is a beautiful person.
I wanted to meet Jennifer in connection with her work as an organizer of the Asheville Bread Festival, without knowing all the other things she is involved with.
Let’s just say my own naivete might be my biggest asset. We had a rollicking good talk and I learned so, so much.
Read MoreKeep on shipping. Ship before you’re comfortable. And for sure, ship before it’s perfect. Ship this one so you can make another.
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