Breanna Fletcher transitions her B&G Foods bakery into a vegan operation | Food items and drink | Gambit Weekly

Breanna Fletcher identified an desire in cooking though in significant college and received a scholarship to the Louisiana Culinary Institute in Baton Rouge. Although there, she fell in appreciate with baking and began creating cakes and cookies for buddies and family members. All through the pandemic, she and her fiancée Gerardo Membreno started off B&G Foodstuff and marketed their baked items at farmers marketplaces. Now, they’re transitioning the bakery to a completely vegan operation. They market baked merchandise at Crescent Metropolis Farmers Markets at the Lafitte Greenway on Thursdays and at Metropolis Park on Sundays, and at the Downtown Hammond Farmers Market on Saturdays. Check out fb.com/bassypastries or bandgfoods.sq..web page for a lot more details. 

Gambit: How did you get started a baking business enterprise?

Breanna Fletcher: When I was in culinary college, I started out making cakes for mates and households and bringing them to relatives activities. I posted photos of them on social media and people commenced messaging me and seeking to get. I started off with birthday cakes, and I have accomplished two or three wedding ceremony cakes. I did tiny cookie orders or a dozen cupcakes for a household function. Then it started out to grow, due to the fact men and women had been sharing factors on social media. But I have gotten absent from cakes and do far more bread.

All through Covid, I could not really discover the career I wanted in a bakery, but I was obtaining lots of cake orders. I have buddies at the farmers markets, and they encouraged me to do it. Now it is our entire-time work.

Our initial farmers current market was the Hammond marketplace. I brought some easy yeast breads, like brioche rolls and table loaves. And then I started out the journey with sourdough this 12 months, like a large amount of people for the duration of the pandemic. The pandemic was a blessing for us. I was searching for a way to endure every little thing going on, and (the bakery) labored out.

Gambit: What do you provide at the markets?

Fletcher: Now I am bringing tons of bread. Focaccia, baguettes and table loaves are our staple breads. Our staple sweet is our sourdough cookie. It’s a chocolate chip cookie with brown butter sourdough starter, so it has a tangy caramel flavor. Correct now, since it is interesting, I am bringing cake slices, and they are the 1st things to go. They are in daily flavors like chocolate and vanilla. 

The pleasurable element about becoming at the sector is individuals are psyched for the weekly modifying stuff. They want to see various stuff just about every 7 days. Typically when we convey a little something new, it’s the very first issue to go.

We really do not convey bagels each 7 days, but they go promptly. We’ve been carrying out great things with cookies. We made a mocha espresso cookie. We manufactured pumpkin cookies. Seasonal matters — through the summer time, we had been carrying out a whole lot of veggie pizza with items from the market. Individuals convey them dwelling and reheat it.

The sweet potato turmeric boule was like a science experiment. I was on Facebook and searching at all these neat colors of issues with sourdough. I was like, “What can I uncover at the farmers sector?” We take sweet potato and puree it and mix it into the dough. Then we take turmeric we received at the market and make virtually a juice out of it and made use of it to give the bread a brilliant orange shade.

I have been earning a flaky pie crust and putting caramelized onions on the crust. Then I make what appears to be like a rose out of potatoes and set it on the pie and pour herb butter on prime of it. It preferences like Thanksgiving in a pie.

We’re a cottage bakery suitable now, but we’re accomplishing seriously nicely at the marketplaces. There’s a cutoff for a cottage baker — you cannot make in excess of a specific total in advance of you have to transfer to a professional kitchen area. We hope to be in a industrial kitchen by spring and have our LLC and paperwork. We’ll nevertheless be in a position to provide at markets, but the commercial kitchen opens the doorway to provide to eating places. Ultimately, if we can safe grants and loans, we’ll open our own cafe.

Gambit: How is the transition to veganism heading?

Fletcher: Me and my partner are pescatarians, and we have made a decision that our New Year’s resolution is to go vegan entirely, so we’re going to consider the bakery with us.

All of our breads are vegan. We have vegan satsuma and lemon cakes. We just designed sourdough cookies and oatmeal product pie cookies. It’s all typical ingredients apart from for egg replacer and plant-based mostly butter. That was super simple to switch in excess of, for the reason that the plant-dependent butters these days are scrumptious.

A good deal of our New Orleans buyers ended up asking for vegan options. Now I am in the system of using all of my recipes for things men and women look to like and discovering a way to veganize them without the need of getting rid of taste. We have vegan factors at the market place, but not every little thing is vegan although we transition.

There’s a dish termed baleada. It’s a major Honduran dish. He’s making an attempt to make a vegan variation of that. At the time we’re in the industrial kitchen area, that’s heading to be 1 of the factors we convey to the markets. He does all the sales. He does the searching for items and assists in the kitchen area, but he is a huge cook dinner. He never went to culinary university, but he’s normally been in the kitchen area.

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