Biography

One of my earliest memories is of piping buttercream roses on a paper plate while my grandmother decorated a cake for someone's wedding.  This was the career that chose her and would adventually choose me.  She couldn't afford to pay someone to make her wedding cake so she made it herself.  Afterwards, several friends commissioned her to make theirs and so it began.  She always let me help her in the kitchen.  She'd let me sit on the counter next to her while she was cooking, baking & decorating.

I went away to college in hopes of becoming a French teacher.  Along with my studies, I spent four years in Gainesville, FL cooking at an Asian restaurant and baking vegan cookies for local coffee shops.  My vegan cowboy cookies were such a big hit that I started questioning my career choice.

I graduated from University of Florida in 2002 and moved back home to Chestertown, Maryland where I begin teaching at the same public high school I attended.  In the mornings before school, I helped my friend Dianne with her new bakery business.  In time, I found I enjoyed baking with Dianne much more than I enjoyed fighting with teenagers.  That's when I decided in lieu of a Master's in Education, I would go to the Culinary Institute of America to learn as much as I could about baking.

My first baking class at the CIA was all about bread.  Up to this point, I never even considered baking bread but this is the point where I fell in love with everything about yeast and gluten.   I couldn't get enough and this course only lasted for three weeks.  I started working at Bread Alone before class and on the weekends to get as much exposure as I could to dough.  Once I earned my degree, I went to work for Wegmans in Rochester, NY helping to develop new bread formulas for their 70+ stores.  Though this was a great experience, the corporate baking world wasn't for me so I moved to NYC and started baking at Amy's Bread.

At Amy's Bread, we baked for over 300 wholesale accounts such as Tavern on the Green, The River Cafe, Seagrill, Dean and Deluca and Citarella.  I would wager that if you've dined in NYC, you've eaten Amy's Bread. A lot happened during the three years I worked at Amy's.  I met my best friend Alex, met my husband Kevin, got married, got pregnant.....

Mark Edmonds was a former employee from Amy's Bread.  He resigned, moved to Milford, PA and started conceptualizing what would be The Patisserie. After my daughter, Josephine was born, I wanted to get out of the city so Kevin and I packed up our little family and moved to Milford to help Mark with The Patisserie.  

A couple years later, our son Keegan was born. We were longing for the city life again (people, diversity, civilization).  I called a few friends who called a few friends and I eventually connected with George Erasmus, formerly of La Brea Bakery, currently from Tribeca Oven.  We chatted over the course of a few months and in June 2010, he offered me a job as Research & Development Specialist.  Kevin and I used this as our ticket out of Milford.  We now reside in Montclair, NJ, just outside of NYC.  I'm responsible for creating yummy new breads for the company, training future artisan bakers and getting people hyped about eating good bread!

So, welcome to my blog and to my life as a baker and as a mommy.  As you'll see, the two go hand in hand.  I hope you enjoy reading about my exploits as much as I enjoy living them.