During the pandemic, nearly everything went online, from shopping to meetings. But what about when you’re craving a fresh-baked pastry? Mika Ellison has the story.
HAVE YOU EVER EATEN A PASTRY FROM A BAKERY THAT EXISTED ONLY ON THE
INTERNET? THE PHENOMENON OF ONLINE BAKERIES, OR MICRO BAKERIES, WHERE
CUSTOMERS PLACE PREORDERS AND PICK UP THEIR PRIZES AT A PREDETERMINED
LOCATION, HAVE BECOME POPULAR RECENTLY DUE TO THE COVID-19 PANDEMIC.I SPOKE TO THREE BAKERS THAT STARTED MICRO-BAKERIES FROM THEIR HOMES, AND ASKED THEM ABOUT THEIR EXPERIENCES.
[music]
DANIEL KOESTER WORKED PROFESSIONALLY AS A PASTRY CHEF, BUT LOST HIS JOB DUE
TO THE PANDEMIC. INSPIRED BY OTHER MICRO BAKERIES POPPING UP AROUND THE
CITY, HE DECIDED TO START DAN THE BAKER, WHICH SELLS CLASSIC BREADS AND PASTRIES, LIKE BAGUETTES AND CRUFFINS.
AFTER PROMOTING HIS FLEDGLING BUSINESS ON INSTAGRAM AND DEFYING
EXPECTATIONS DURING HIS FIRST WEEKEND, KOESTER DECIDED TO COMMIT TO MAKING
HIS BUSINESS WORK. HE SAYS ONE OF THE MOST MEMORABLE MOMENTS HAPPENED LAST CHRISTMAS EVE.
[DK] That was our first pop up, where we just made a bunch of stuff, we didn’t do any pre orders.And the whole lead up to that. I mean, even my wife is like, what if nobody comes? And I’m like, I know, like, what if we make all this stuff? And then I mean, there were people lined up at like 7:30, 45. And we basically sold out in like an hour and a half. I was pretty blown away. I did not expect everyone to show up like that. And it was pretty amazing. And that was kind of the first time was like, maybe I can do this.
KOESTER THINKS HIS SUCCESS IS DUE IN PART TO THE QUALITY OF HIS BAKING.
[DK] I think there’s a lot of bakeries that are kind of just pushing quantity over quality. And so I guess my theory is I’m just gonna try and do it, you know, make the best product I can possibly make. And I think that will draw people in and keep people coming back.
KOESTER ALSO CREDITS DAN THE BAKER’S THRIVING BUSINESS TO REPEAT CUSTOMERS THAT FORM AN INTEGRAL PART OF THE COMMUNITY.
[DK] I would see the names, you know, week after week, every now and again, I would meet them. I
just got an email two days ago from, I think one of my biggest customers, and he’s like, you know, what’s the news? When can we get back on our bread and pastry addiction?
DAN THE BAKER TOOK A BREAK LAST MONTH, BUT THEY’VE GOT A NEW LOCATION DOWNTOWN AND ARE OPENING BACK UP THIS WEEKEND. LOOKING FORWARD, KOESTER SAYS HE’S EXCITED TO GET BACK IN BUSINESS.
[DK] I’m going to be opening back up in the West Loop out of the Emily Hotel, which is on Morgan Street. I’m really excited to get back in the kitchen and start. It’s hard. It’s super demanding. You know, long, long days, long hours, but yeah, I don’t know what else I would do. I really love it.
[music]
MASA MADRE IS A MEXICAN JEWISH ONLINE BAKERY THAT’S BEEN CRAFTING ORDERS AND GETTING THEM TO CUSTOMERS FOR OVER THREE YEARS.
[Tamar Fasja Unikel] We specialize in a lot of Jewish pastries, with Mexican flavor, inspirations, but we also do Mexican pastries.
I SPOKE TO ONE OF ITS FOUNDERS, TAMAR FASJA UNIKEL, WHO MOVED TO CHICAGO FROM MEXICO CITY EIGHT YEARS AGO AND THEN DECIDED TO MOVE FROM THE FASHION WORLD TO THE FOOD ONE WITH HER BUSINESS PARTNER, ELENA VASQUEZ FELGUERES.
[TFU] We thought that there was a lack of good quality bread in Chicago. So we thought about starting our own business. And, you know, we didn’t really have any money for it, we didn’t have a lot of experience. So we thought, why not start baking and try to promote it on Instagram and see if people start buying it?
MASA MADRE, IN SPANISH, MEANS SOURDOUGH STARTER. UNIKEL AND FELGUERES USED IT AS THE NAME OF THEIR BAKERY BECAUSE SOURDOUGH WAS THE FIRST THING THEY SOLD.
[TFU] We really liked the name, because we knew that we were going to use a lot of recipes that came from our home, from our families, from our grandmothers. And, you know, everything was going to be based out of dough. And we thought it was a really great combination of words, because it really represented us.
WHILE THE PANDEMIC SHUT DOWN OR CLOSED A NUMBER OF PHYSICAL STORES, MASA
MADRE CONTINUED, OPERATING THROUGH VARIOUS PICK-UP LOCATIONS AROUND THE CITY. UNIKEL SAID THAT SEEING A COMMUNITY BE BUILT AROUND THEIR VIRTUAL BAKERY WAS AN INSPIRING EXPERIENCE.
[TFU] It was great, we found out that there’s a lot of people that relate to either Jewish flavors, Mexican flavors, or both of them combined as an identity, or as a Latino and Jewish identity that they weren’t really finding anything like that here in Chicago. So we just really found a lot of customers that just really liked our quality and our bread and our story.
UNIKEL SAYS THAT SOME HIGHLIGHTS OF HER TIME AT MASA MADRE HAVE BEEN THE
EVENTS THEY’VE DONE WITH OTHER ORGANIZATIONS AND THE TIMES SHE GETS TO
INTERACT WITH MEMBERS OF THE COMMUNITY WHO AREN’T JUST BEHIND A SCREEN.
LOOKING AHEAD, SHE’S EXCITED ABOUT CREATING THAT SPACE WITH A BRICK AND MORTAR STORE.
[TFU] The opening of the store, for sure, I’m very excited about— we’re hoping to be open by the end of the summer. So just having a place where people can come, where people can gather, where they can see us and talk.
UNIKEL SAYS DESPITE THE TRAVAILS OF A PANDEMIC, RUNNING A BUSINESS, AND THE
FACT THAT HER HOBBY IS NOW HER JOB, SHE STILL LOVES EXPERIMENTING IN THE KITCHEN.
[TFU] I still feel like that’s my hobby. Whenever I’m not working. I’m baking just for myself.
[music]
JAYE FONG HAS A DEGREE IN ARCHITECTURE, BUT WHEN THE PANDEMIC HIT, SHE WAS FURLOUGHED, AND THE GROWING VISIBILITY OF THE BLACK LIVES MATTER MOVEMENT AND OTHER RACIAL TENSIONS IN THE US SPURRED HER INTO ACTION.
[Jaye Fong] I was feeling really paralyzed by a lot of it. So I decided to just do a fundraiser. Why don’t I, like, bake some things, try to give away some plants, raise some money. And maybe that will kind of help me refocus a little bit on what’s important right now.”
THE FUNDRAISER WAS SUCCESSFUL, AND INSPIRED FONG TO CONTINUE PURSUING HER PASSION FOR BAKING.
FONG STARTED AN INSTAGRAM ACCOUNT, AND BEGAN BUILDING AN AUDIENCE. I ASKED HER WHY ITS NAME, MAA MAA DEI, IS SIGNIFICANT.
[JF] Maa Maa Dei is a phrase in Cantonese. It means like, it’s just okay. It’s not great. It kind of also stems from this notion of when you’re growing up here in the US, I feel like as either first, second gen, you kind of carry a lot of the weight of your parents and your family sacrifices. But like, I knew that if I wanted to pursue this as something like an actual business, I needed to kind of give myself a little bit of breathing room, to, you know, make mistakes, and to be okay with that.
FONG SAYS HER BAKED GOODS ARE SIMILARLY INSPIRED BY FIRST AND SECOND GENERATION CULTURE.
[JF] It’s all tapped into, like, Third Culture flavors, this melding between traditional foods and also modern Asian flavors and bakes. I did like a white rabbit rice krispie treat. I did a haw flakes oatmeal cookie. So it’s really pulling from the nostalgia of a lot of the candies and treats that I had the flavors of my youth, but then also blending them with a lot of the things that we’re so familiar with in the Midwest.
THE RESPONSE TO MAA MAA DEI SURPRISED FONG.
[JF] It was honestly, and it still remains to this day, completely shocking to me to have such love and dedication from a lot of customers.
FOR THE PAST FEW YEARS, FONG HAS MADE ZHONG, A TRADITIONAL STICKY RICE
DUMPLING, FOR THE DRAGON BOAT FESTIVAL. SHE TAUGHT HERSELF TO MAKE THEM
AFTER SEEING HER GRANDMOTHER MAKE THEM ONCE. RECENTLY, A CUSTOMER REACHED OUT TO SHARE HER OWN JOURNEY WITH MAKING ZHONG.
[JF] She sent me photos. And I just, like, I cried, because I think a lot of what we struggle with as being children of immigrants is that you’ve lost your connection, your direct connection, I should say, to the homeland. You’re now straddling that line between two cultures. So to see somebody say, “No, I want to preserve this, I want to explore this, I want to reconnect in this way.” It was really moving.
ALTHOUGH NOT HAVING A BRICK AND MORTAR OR A TEAM OF CHEFS COMES WITH ITS
OWN CHALLENGES,
[JF] It is just my little two hands making every single mooncake, or whatever it is.
FONG SAYS HER MOTHER AND PARTNER HELP OUT, AND BEING ABLE TO MOVE AROUND
THE CITY HAS GIVEN HER A GREATER APPRECIATION FOR THE UNIQUE ENCLAVES IN EACH NEIGHBORHOOD.
[JF] You can kind of feel a greater sense of community with Chicago as a whole and the Chicago hospitality and food scene. Like every neighborhood in Chicago, I think has its own personality, which is really neat.
ANOTHER SILVER LINING OF THE PANDEMIC AND AN INCREASE IN ONLINE BAKERIES, FONG SAYS, IS A NEW ATTITUDE TOWARDS EACH OTHER.
[JF] With this advent of pop-up culture and all these micro bakeries, everybody is so supportive of each other. So it’s like, there’s space for everybody, especially if you’re representing your ethnicity or culture that has, up until this point, been severely underrepresented.
FONG IS EXCITED ABOUT HER PLANNED POP UP AT WOMEN AND CHILDREN FIRST BOOKSTORE ON FEBRUARY 12TH. THE POP UP IS A COLLABORATION WITH AUTHOR GLORIA CHAO FOR HER 4TH NOVEL, WHEN YOU WISH UPON A LANTERN.
[JF] Mooncakes are something that are just, like, so special. You know, we usually just have them for mid autumn. But because the mooncakes were so central to this story that the author has written, I decided to have them out a little bit early for that as a special occasion.
[music]
WHETHER IT’S A FRESHLY BAKED CROISSANT, CHALLAH, OR MOONCAKE THAT YOU’RE
LOOKING FOR, THERE JUST MIGHT BE A WAY TO GET SOME WITHOUT LEAVING YOUR COUCH.
FOR NOW, I’LL LEAVE YOU WITH WHAT NORTHWESTERN STUDENT ANDREW CHANG SAID WHEN HE TRIED MASA MADRE’S CHOCOLATE BABKA.
[Andrew Chang] That’s delightful!
FOR WNUR NEWS, I’M MIKA ELLISON.
