Hola! my name is Maria Baradell and this is the story of Leaf & Loaf, the bread cottage bakery I run from my home in Dallas under Texas Cottage Food Law.
I think it would be fair to start from the very beginning. I was born in Caracas, Venezuela in 1987 and bread was an important part of my diet growing up. There weren't any packaged snacks or meals, so besides fruit, bread was the quickest snack one could have.
I never experienced bloating when eating bread until I moved to the United States. Bread here was not fun to eat. Not only it made me feel bloated and regret my life choices, but it was also meh, lacking flavor big time and with a weird texture.
My mom is a retired biology teacher who loved to cook and bake and she would turn anything into a biology lesson. Growing up I found that very annoying, but I somehow remember everything my mom taught me. That's probably why I find plants and bread so fascinating (and why my bakery is named Leaf & Loaf). I remember having many lessons on how plants turn light into energy and oh-so-many lessons on how yeast operates to make bread rise, among many random biology lessons on the human body and really anything that's alive. Mom, if you read this, I love you very much and I am so thankful for you! I'm sorry I was such a mean teenager!
Baking was always fun for me. I have many beautiful memories baking with my mom. I even started selling my deserts at a local store in my early 20s. I remember telling my husband when we first met (a very interesting story on its own) that I didn't know much about house chores, but that I made "delicious desserts".
I have been married to Scott for 14 years and we have 5 amazing children: Juliet, Benjamin, Jack, Christopher and Margaret.
I baked some early in my marriage and journey into motherhood, but somehow I lost that drive. I was feeling overwhelmed by the dishes, the cleaning, the never ending list of to-dos, work, etc and cooking and baking simply didn't make the list.
I was laid off in August 2023 and depression took a strong hold of me. I remember thinking, If I die, what is a meal my kids will remember me for. Nothing came to mind.
That December I watched a friend post a story of her baking sourdough bread. She said her house smelled amazing and that sparked some joy for me. I wanted my kids to experience that smell when they came home from school and to remember it as they grow old. I started watching sourdough videos and decided to give it a try. Creating and feeding my very own sourdough starter was exciting.
I baked my first loaf of sourdough bread using a neighbor's starter while I waited for mine to be ready to bake with. Surprisingly, I was able to make a really beautiful and tasty loaf of bread on my very first try, even though I was certain it would be a difficult learning experience. My family devoured it that same evening and asked me to make more. I was hooked and determined to get better at it. I had a purpose and a reason to get out of bed. Sourdough was very healing for me at that time.
Sourdough awoke in me my love for science and history, so I read as much as I could to learn more about sourdough, all while continuing to experiment. I was making so many loaves of bread that even my large family of 7 couldn’t eat them fast enough, so I started gifting bread to my friends and neighbors who raved about how good it was. The word was spreading fast about “Maria’s really good bread”.
Among all the videos I watched, I found people with different backgrounds, which encouraged me to share my journey with others even though I was afraid my accent would be a problem. That’s when I decided I was ready to start selling my breads. My first drop of 15 loaves of bread sold in less than an hour. I opened my Instagram and Tiktok’s accounts and started sharing about my breads online.
Thanks to my marketing background, the local demand for my breads grew, which led me to another milestone in my bakery story: figuring out how to bake more loaves of bread at once.
Buying a $9k bread oven was not an option within our family budget, and as a busy mom I couldn’t spend all day baking using 2-4 Dutch Ovens at the time, which is the traditional way of baking sourdough bread to trap the steam necessary for the bread to rise. I had to figure out how to bake more in less time using my home double wall oven.
I came across Haley's videos baking artisan loaves in loaf pans and that inspired me to try that method, but I didn’t know how to “open bake”, so I wondered what would happen if I used an additional loaf pan as a lid. I tried it and the bread came out beautiful! This was a game changer because it would allow me to bake 24 loaves of bread at one in my home double wall oven. It meant that bakers with gas ovens and cannot open bake could increase their production if using this method instead of heavy, expensive, big Dutch Ovens. I posted about it on a group of micro bakers on Facebook and many asked for more details and were very excited to try it. I was surprised by a couple of comments on that thread saying they had done this before. Why was no one sharing this technique with the world?
As I continued posting on Instagram and Tiktok about my bakes using the Two Pan Method, many bakers found my account and followed along for tips on how to bake in bulk themselves. Bakers started trying the method and tagging me with their beautiful results.
I was so happy with how things were going that I started daydreaming of my mission: “Bringing Bread Back” to every home in America and the world. I want to teach people how to create and maintain a sourdough starter -a family heirloom starting in your kitchen that can be passed down generations- and the joy of making nutritious sourdough bread at home. I would love to have a bread baker in every neighborhood and I am determined to reach and inspire as many bakers as possible to reach my goal. Together we increase the demand for gut-healthy bread and bakes so that there is enough business for all home bakers to be successful.
My mission led me to writing an eBook teaching sourdough to beginners and the first eBook in the market helping bakers launch, run, and market their home bakeries. I also host the Sourdough Awards - Together We Rise, to honor the top content creators in the sourdough space. I love sharing recipes and to see other bakers try and love them and I have a lot of goals and projects in mind. I can't wait to bring you all along this exciting journey with me. Stay tuned!
Love,
Maria
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