NEWS: Bread Evangelist Launches Micro Bakery
Lucky Loaf Bakery, a micro-bakery that creates whole-grain artisanal bread launched in Santa Ana. The bakery is the brainchild of Karen Marshall. Her first entrepreneurial effort, Marshall Event Productions, produces conferences and awards shows in OC, Los Angeles and Las Vegas.
“Working as an event producer I often noticed how under-addressed eating was at many conferences, festivals and galas. There seemed to be a prevailing assumption that if the menu item said ‘vegetarian’ or ‘seafood’ or if it came with a salad it must be healthy for you.”
That’s not always the case, she said. Many so-called healthy menu items at events are loaded with added sugars, fats and preservatives. But that basket of bread is not always the villain it’s made out to be either, she added, alluding to the low-carb trends and diets these days.
Lucky Loaf Bakery is a counter-point to that and enables Marshall to promote her unabashed love of bread.
“I love bread and I don’t believe it’s the tainted food it’s made out to be,” she said. “Bread is very beneficial and full of good, wholesome, healing ingredients. In many conversations I find myself sharing my knowledge and dispelling the myth that bread is an evil villain. I believe in what I am baking. Delivering a healthy product is, to me, the most important thing I can do in this business.”
Passion For Bread
Marshall gained an affinity for cooking and baking when she lived in New Orleans for eight years. There she developed a passion for “real food” and absorbed “tons of knowledge from that community of cooks.”
The local culture in Louisiana depends largely on the land for food,” she said. “Shrimp, crawfish, and catfish are plentiful, which means seafood is a main staple in New Orleans kitchens. Sugar cane, rice, okra and greens are sourced locally as well. It taught me to respect local resources and farm laborers who worked to deliver them. I learned to create dishes that maintained the balance of the land.”
Now she wants to educate others about food in order to make people aware of the ingredients in the food they eat. Especially about the benefits of whole natural and locally-sourced grains.
She found an urban grain mill in Pasadena, Grist & Toll and soon began incorporating its stone-ground flours into all of her breads.
When she began baking loaves of bread for her family and friends they kept asking her for more, she said. One evening, during a dinner party in her home, several people suggested she sell her bread.
“I kind of laughed at this,” she said. “Definitely not something I had ever considered. I am an introvert and not one to sing my own praises or advertise the food I make. I just like to see people smile when they eat it.”
But on a whim one afternoon she posted on a local website that she had just baked some bread and would be selling the extra loaves the next morning.
“To my surprise, I had 10 responses in 10 minutes,” she said. “They came, they bought and once they tasted my bread they came back for more. It was so cool! And completely unexpected.”
Entire article can be found at OC Startups Now. ocstartupsnow.com It was originally published on June 19, 2017. As a subscriber, I have permission to re-post this article here…