Critic’s notebook: Bakers gonna bake, bagels to dumplings

Jeanne Lee is a local teacher; Yun Mi Park worked in journalism, public relations and later at a Publix grocery bakery before relocating her family from Georgia to Troy. Martha Codio, a native of Montreal, is a compounding pharmacy technician; Sam Gifford, a graduate of The College of Saint Rose, is a vegan baker; and Eliza Hunter has baked bread professionally from Manhattan to Hudson over the past eight years. All share a common bond: They’re part of the Instagram pastry revolution. 

As 2020 made a nation of bakers and spurred a national flour shortage, these and other bakers, alone or with partners or families, lit up Instagram with tempting photos of their doughnuts, boules, bagels, dumplings and empanadas. And they weren’t alone. Under lockdown, friends placed orders and spread the word on social media. When businesses reopened, local coffee shops and restaurants collaborated, selling these baked goods out of brick-and-mortar stores. 

Instagram’s visual format put bakers’ floured surfaces, rising dough and dripping iced cakes on display as the rest of us doomsday-scrolled. I bought empanadas in Cohoes, pizza in Arbor Hill, Japanese melon-pan cookies in Schenectady and, in Troy, mochi cakes and Montreal-style bagels. When businesses reopened, we saw dumpling and empanada pop-ups in brewery taprooms to meet the requirement to serve food with alcohol. Bake sales supported local Free Food Fridges and, nationwide, Bakers Against Racism rallied behind Black Lives Matter protests. From crusty loaves to madeleines, niche baking fueled a cottage bakery boom. 

Though the reasons for starting are diverse —  from a financial lifeline while unemployed to missing home when borders closed — there’s something to say about customers, too. Instagram fans wait for posts of the week, observe order dates, order via direct messages, pay in advance via PayPal or Venmo, and collect orders in timed windows on residential streets. It’s the antithesis of supermarket one-stop shopping, closer to the once-a-week farmers market. Miss the order window, and you’re done. It’s a quest to secure the ultimate micro-business loot. Here are five I’ve tried. 

Sam Gifford, Strawberry Snail

The former manager of Stagecoach Coffee in Albany already had fans of her vegan doughnuts while baking part-time for The Cakerino, a fellow vegan baker known for her cakes at the former Berber & Wolff’s cafes. By 2019, Gifford was hosting pop-ups at Troy art shows, 3 Fish Cafe and Pint Sized in Albany, later selling wholesale to 3 Fish Cafe when it reopened after the first lockdown. 

But with pandemic pop-ups curtailed, Gifford moved operations online, photographing her pillowy-soft, yeast-milk-bread doughnuts in magical flavors like lemon lavender, orange creamsicle and peach iced tea, and growing a loyal following. To order, customers review the flavors, placing orders one day ahead and collecting in a two-hour window the next day. The latest hot news is that Post on Lark Street now stocks Strawberry Snail treats. $2 apiece.

Instagram: @strawberrysnaildoughnuts 

Jeanne Lee and Brian Yung, Two Little Dumplings

Until 2020, Jeanne Lee’s parents ran a Christian retreat in Greenville, so when the pandemic shut down the opportunity to gather, Lee, her parents and husband Brian Yung found a way to offer comfort to families facing the difficulties of lockdown. Inspired by their Taiwanese heritage and memories of gathering with family and friends to make dumplings, they started Two Little Dumplings, a frozen dumpling company. They tested early batches on friends and launched the business in December with Instagram to promote weekly flavors. 

Selling dumplings and Lee’s father’s dipping sauce and chile oil, the family takes orders via website, with twice-weekly pickup times and collection from their Delmar driveway. Lee’s father, a head chef with years of experience catering overnight camps, is behind the recipes, but dumpling production is a family affair with Lee’s husband, parents and brothers all involved. Even the company name comes from Lee’s father’s nickname for his two granddaughters. Preorder frozen 1-pound batches (approximately 12-14 dumplings), $12 to $16, depending on filling. 

Instagram: @two.little.dumplings. Website: twolittledumplings.com

Martha Codio and Aaron Walters, Martha’s Bagel Project

Around her May birthday, with the Canadian border closing and cutting off access to her favorite Montreal-style bagels, Martha Codio told her husband, Aaron Walters, “I’m going to make my own.” Codio got to work testing out a version she could make at home and surprised Walters on her first attempt, suggesting the skills of a compound-pharmacist technician lend themselves to the precision of baking. 

Compared to New York bagels, the Montreal style is smaller, more dense, subtly sweet and baked in a wood-fired oven, but the Montreal native decided to make it “the Martha way,” with a softer crumb, perfect for sandwiches. Codio experimented with non-GMO, organic flours and settled on a boil-and-oven-bake method. As her confidence grew from friends’ reactions and “the huge smiles” after giving test bagels to neighbors, Walters pitched the idea of “a business project” using Instagram to “put it out there and gauge interest.” Both are pursuing MBAs at Clarkson University in Potsdam, where the Shipley Center of Innovation, a resource for startups, has been a key source of help. 

By January of this year, Alias Coffee inside 518 Craft, the Schmaltz Brewing tasting room in Troy, agreed to carry Martha’s Bagel Project in-store. While the couple has long-term goals for the business, Codio is content staying small for now, making small-batch orders for Alias, preorders and shooting “fun, funky bagel photos” for Instagram every week. Bagel with cream cheese, $3.75 at Alias.

Instagram: @marthasbagelproject

Yun Mi Park, Brown Butter Bakery

Yun Mi Park started Brown Butter Bakery in 2019 as a Spring Fest vendor at Chatham Berry Farm, selling Western brown-butter chocolate cookies and Rice Krispies treats. By April 2020, as the pandemic shuttered restaurants and restricted travel, she partnered with Sunhee’s Farm & Kitchen, a Korean restaurant in her hometown of Troy. She baked mochi cakes, a Korean glutinous rice cake, as a dessert add-on for their Night Market dinners-to-go.

Park, who is second-generation Korean American, settled on a hybrid Eastern and Western technique, adding butter, eggs and sugar to traditional sweet rice flour and coconut milk, a method similar to bibingka, or Hawaiian butter mochi. Cakes have the chewiness of classic mochi with the familiarity of cake, in flavors from matcha to black sesame and gluten-free coconut. The most popular is blueberry, which Park says is “reminiscent of a blueberry muffin.” Mochi cakes are now the bulk of Park’s business, and are available at Sunhee’s on Ferry Street and Maria’s in the River Street Market (Troy) and Jang Tuh, an Asian market in Latham. $3.50 to $4 each. Park accepts batch orders for mochi cakes (16 pieces) and custom cookie orders by DM.

Instagram: @brownbutterbakeryny

Eliza Hunter, Ovenbird Baking

When a local chef told me Ovenbird Baking has “the best sourdough in 100 miles,” I knew it was high praise. Eliza Hunter, an avid hiker, bird watcher and professional baker, named her company after a bird that makes an oven-shaped nest. Working from home, she meticulously sources flour from New York farms and millers, hand-mixes her dough and bakes just two loaves at a time in two ovens. It takes 10 hours to make 20 loaves of bread. 

Originally from Troy, Hunter graduated with a degree in art education before apprenticing with Yann Ledoux at famed artisanal bakery Maison Kayser in Manhattan, securing an internship in Paris and working as a pastry chef at A Tavolo Trattoria in New Paltz, where she baked buns and bread for other restaurants. She later freelanced for upstate bakeries like Bonfiglio in Hudson and Berkshire Mountain Bakery. 

When the pandemic hit, Hunter was baking pizza shells for Rare Form Brewing, but after years working for others, she was ready to bake for herself. Hunter launched Ovenbird as an Instagram-based business focused on all-natural, leavened sourdough bread flavored with herbes de provence or chocolate and toasted pecan. Sun-drenched photos and video clips show Hunter handling fresh loaves, tapping their hollow bottom and slicing open to reveal impeccable crumb. After each post, customers have 24 hours to place orders. Luckily, Hunter is upgrading to a bigger oven so she can bake 12 loaves at a time and, like last year, her loaves are available from Edible Uprising Farm’s CSA and virtual farm store. $6 to $8 per loaf.

Instagram: @ovenbird_baking