“There are so many experiences and stories of lockdown and you know, I know, how important baking was to so many people. Sourdough in particular. We know that when we feed our starter it comes alive. We know that we renew it and we see it respond, and we create a dough and we see it respond. And that life and renewal that came out of it, I think, was also another positive element. People going through the confusion and that awful time that we had. But also then the connection that it gave people… it was huge and it brought a lot of us together.”
“In February of 2020, I was looking at commercial spaces, building out a business plan, and trying to decide between moving into a space or building a space… and I was like set to meet in March to create our own space in Bentonville. And then, obviously, March 2020 everyone’s lives changed significantly and my my choice either scale way up and take a huge gamble and buildout a bakery in the middle of a global pandemic or scale way back and move back into my house, and bake out of my house again…”
“I use my sourdough starter, I don’t use my discard when I’m making cookies… and I maintain my acidity in my feedings, so i’m never going to have a super sour. If I’m looking for that well then I’m going to look for a grain that will be a little more active faster, and maybe leave it to bloom a little longer… and see how the flavor is changing and imparting on the cookie dough.”
“Sourdough…. It’s like a meditation for me, it’s getting my hands into the dough, feeling the dough, connecting with the earth, connecting with the Spirit. And it’s helped me so much. It still does. This is, perhaps, not the material point of sourdough, it’s more like a spiritual one.”
“We opened those bags of fresh flour, it was like ‘holy smokes!’ We’d never experienced something like this before. We had always just had white flour that was all about function and performance and not so much about aroma and flavor. And so we said, ‘we’ve got to do this, this is like nothing we’ve ever experienced before.’ So that was the impetus.”
“That was really the space that gave me the confidence of wanting to be a baker… [it] is necessary to have mentors that look like you… these are two women telling me that I can be a real bad ass lady baker… I think you need to ask yourself what responsibility will I take on in my community as someone who might have a platform…”
“I am a fermentation maniac. I sit there at night and think about my starter bubbling away. There’s just something magic that happens between the ingredients going together and my hands getting involved - we call it the conversation with the dough. Every time I’m not talking to the dough I wonder why I’m not. You experience that and then you see how the product enriches people’s lives… What inspires me is fermenting bread and seeing what flavors and textures you can coax out of a powdery substance and water - it’s magic.”
“…I was painting, and I had to gradually let that go as we were adding more children to our family. I really just needed to carve out a space to be creative still, and that year of 2015, of us feeling desperate, I really felt like I was looking for something… you start tasting how real fresh grain tastes compared to stuff that’s been sitting on the shelves… and also after baking that first loaf, even though I remember many cuss words and burning my hands and it being really difficult - that it was just like an immediate addiction… I was like, I hated that - but I’m going to do it again…”
“It’s important to have that support network at home because cottage baking can be a very isolating activity. You’re not working in a bakery with other bakers that you can share your successes and failures with and when you’re alone you can get in a bit of a spiral where you have self doubt and lose confidence. And there is a community online that you can reach out to but having an immediate support network is very important”
