Bakery as anchor, as the future

November came through like whiplash. I felt validated last week when someone said to me in a DM, “Things have been a whirlwind for you.” Clocked me. Since I last wrote to you I had a short-lived identity crisis. Going from independent cottage baker > restaurant pastry chef > back to working for myself in a span of five quick months created the perfect conditions for whiplash, the whirlwind, a crisis within.

For an entire week I was listening to “Landslide”, on repeat, on my morning walks. Something about Stevie, who I’ve been listening to since the seventh grade, acknowleding the passage of time comforts me as I’m getting older too.

Who was that person who thought it would be ok to put her life’s work on a back burner while making pastry and money for someone she shouldn’t have trusted? And now that I’m back to my own bakery (and myself), how can I grow At Heart in a truly sustainable way that will support longevity, both my own and that of this bakery? How can I contribute to a better local food system as a person who feeds the public? Am I even good enough to continue baking for the public and for profit? Can I handle the seasons of my life?

To borrow from Zora Neale Hurston’s Their Eyes Were Watching God: if the first years of At Heart have been years that ask questions, let the years to come be those of answers.

In the immediate future, custom cake and concha orders keep me busy once again. It is a relief to fall back on this. There’s also the pop ups that aren’t really sustainable in the sense that they’re so, so much work and I can only price a pastry so high, I can only make so many conchas by myself. There’s also a limit to what I can charge, a limit to what people will pay for a concha or cake slice. I wonder if I would have this problem if I ran a sit down dinner pop up.

Nevertheless, pop ups are a good chance to get in front of customers and occupy a space in public for an afternoon. A weekly farmers market is what I have my eye on next, in the spring of 2026. I need newness, something fresh, something I haven’t done before. Springtime is usually very good to At Heart and I need to feel alive!

The vision I have for the long term future anchor and steady me for now. Imagine a contemporary panadería counter shop. Nothing big. My Pay What You Can pricing model is coming with me. Imagine still a colorful pastry case front and center, atop which fresh flowers in colorful vases will sit and greet. There will be a coffee program for those who wish to slow down and indulge in the cafecito + pan dulce ritual.

Conchas, seasonal garden cake slices, a variety of cookies, a menu of all vegetarian pastry and sandwiches. Cake slices eaten at the bakery will be served elegantly on dessert plates to encourage one to take the time to enjoy small, beautiful things. One side of the indoor space will have shelves of cookbooks and food magazines and zines for sale; retail and art from local artists and other makers on the other. Outside on the covered patio where people will sit and eat their pan dulce and vegetarian sandwiches, I’ll grow herbs and edible flowers in pots.

I’ve always taken it seriously that my job is to feed the public. This work—hard on my body, slim profit margins, and sometimes lonely as it is—has meaning regardless. This is why I ask these questions. Running a bakery is my privilege. Had I come from money, or had the capital to start At Heart as a brick and mortar instead of independently at home, I don’t know that I would have needed to ask myself these questions. I do believe a tiny bakery can achieve big things. Small food businesses doing things in fresh, creative ways with the intention of subverting the exploitative nature of capitalism have a major role in the future of food, and I plan to be there.

Notes & News

• Currently reading: Rebuilding the Foodshed by Philip Ackerman-Leist and The Blessings of Bread by Adrian Bailey.

• I’m back at my old pop up stomping grounds, Opo Coffee in downtown Decatur next Saturday! I’ll share more details next week.

• I contributed a recipe for a big holiday cookie package coming out next week. I’m glad to have found a way to work on recipes for publication just occasionally, and that I don’t have to live and die by relentless recipe development anymore.

• I’ve been referring to my bakery as “independent” because I’m not reliant on or beholden to investors, and any success or growth I’ve had has come organically, over time, often at snail’s pace. At least now when I wake up at 4AM, it’s self-inflicted.

• Earlier in November, Kate Ray wrote about some of her own questions her bakery, Ray Bakes, has brought up for her and that she thinks about her work “as a way to use baking for radical imagination.” Our questions and imaginations as bakers are an entrypoint into the role(s) bakeries can, and should, play in society. Pastry can go deep! Dessert doesn’t have to mean mere frivolity !!

• I see examples of the big ways small bakeries are moving through the world, all the time. When I was in Philly last month popping up at my friend Dayna and her partner Sam’s Downtime Bakery, I got to see how a bakery is run. All the food that’s typically on my pop up menus—conchas, cake slices, cookies—were made with local to Pennsylvania produce and organic flours, thanks to the thoughtful sourcing practices by Dayna and Sam.

  I remember overhearing a conversation between a Downtime customer and Sam. I was crossing preorder names off a list at the counter when the customer asked Sam about the flours used in Downtime’s bread. Sam answered that they’re organic and locally produced. “It’s important to us,” he said. The ethos is in the ingredients. The ingredients become the ethos, become the product, becomes the impact. I don’t see the point of working so hard as bakers otherwise.