Bakery Letter #12

I’ve been writing these Bakery Letters once a month, every month in 2024. This is the year’s last, the twelfth, in the last and twelfth month of the calendar year. It does seem like now as At Heart evolves (I prefer to evolve as an anti-capitalist bakery owner rather than expand, in the traditional business sense), a monthly post from me is most doable, least stressful. I undoubtedly put pressure on myself to write weekly newsletters and I was able to achieve that for the first half of the year. Once the weekly pop ups began, it became harder to keep up. It continues to be important to me to write this newsletter though, to keep people up to date on bakery stuff, share my thoughts and opinions, but perhaps more importantly, to keep my writing muscles warm.

I have zero goals for this newsletter in 2025. It’s freeing! That’s not true, I have one goal and it’s just to continue writing the newsletter. Whenever I can, whenever there is a lull in baking, when the cakes are in the oven and the blood orange slices are simmering away in simple syrup on the stove. I have enjoyed having the writing to come back to, to try, to share what’s happening at the bakery on a consistent-as-I-can basis.

Bakery life is always in movement, always me jumping to turn off one of the three timers I’ve got going at any given time, always something to take out of the oven and set on a cooling rack. The writing is the steady place. I have to sit down. I have to be calm in mind in order to produce anything coherent. I suppose in 2025 I will continue to see the bakery + this newsletter as the two pillars of my job, in relationship with one another but very distinct ways of doing the work.

Cookbook Zine Update + Bakery Life This Week

There’s a zine shipping delay! Friday the 13th was supposed to be the day I had the zines “in hand” aka on my doorstep from the printer. Earlier this week though I was informed that there was a delay with the shipping, which means I won’t have the zines delivered until next week. Since next week is also my last for the pop ups at Opo Coffee and I’ll be baking up a storm like a very serious Christmas elf, shipping for Panadería will happen in the days after Christmas.

I’m writer, publisher and distributor of At Heart zines. It will be me sitting down in the bakery at my Boos wooden top work table hand-writing the thank you notes and, with the help of a friend, inserting each of the 300+ zines into their bubble mailers and printing out shipping labels on my home printer that actually lives in the bakery next to the bun racks. (I have not put it past me to someday place a small writer’s desk in the bakery—it just makes sense!!) I am sorry to anyone who wanted to gift the zine for the holiday. Imagine Panadería arriving to you in the mail as a belated present though, an extension of the gifting season. If you are one of the locals who chose pick up at checkout, I will have zines for you at the final Opo pop up next Saturday, December 21st starting at 10am.

I will write more on what these weekly pop ups have meant for the bakery, but there has been one game-changing door that’s been flung open thanks to the opportunity. It’s not a brick and mortar, though I have surprised myself this year by softening to the idea. I will say these weekly pop ups have shown me what I’m capable of on a weekly basis; that people will excitedly come back each week; how it’s clear as day to me now that At Heart has outgrown the limitations of a cottage bakery. I wrote a little about this in Bad at Business last month after the election. Fascism is present, it’s here in a myriad of vile ways, and I think all the time about the responsibility a bakery has to its irl community. I’ll go into the new year with that responsibility at the forefront.

Favorites This Week

• On Sunday my husband and I watched Yacht Rock: A Dockumentary on HBO. Actually it was Matt’s idea to watch and while my inital reaction was “….I guess”, I’m glad we did. It is never a bad time to get to hear Michael McDonald’s velvety voice, as I was thankfully reminded.

• I finally started reading The Book of Difficult Fruit by Kate Lebo this week. Right away in the introduction in “A Note on Recipes”, Lebo writes, “I would not call my training formal. Nor have I felt the need for formal training. Everything I know about cooking comes from the apprenticeship to master domestic artists, a cookbook habit, online food forums and blogs, my family, and years of fooling around in the kitchen.” My non-formal culinary training self felt seen, indeed.