MADE WITH Love

PHOTOS & STORY

BY JEN SALVEVOLD

For Doro Schumann “made with love” is a mantra she has always strived to do. And it was within baking that she felt it most strongly.

Part of her story started in the years her children were young, that she really found baking to be a “labor of love.” As good mothers do, she wanted her children to learn by example. It was one Christmas she asked all five of her young children to choose one person to bake Christmas cookies for alongside her. And when the time came Doro would drive the children around town to have them drop off their cookie platters for their selected person. Over the years it went from those five Christmas cookie platters to 35-40 of them.

Doro Schumann poses with one of her many baked goods she makes and sells.

When I asked Doro why she decided to do this, she said, “It was to be a lesson in giving.” She herself, for many years, previously made and shared Christmas cookie platters, sweet breads and baked goodies to new neighbors, the family who just had a baby, the elderly man at church who just lost his wife, and many other reasons to celebrate or help someone with tears in their eyes, as she still does today outside of her business.

You might wonder how her love for baking began. It is not the traditional story some have. For Doro it was in the 70s and 80s in a tar paper shack. Doro’s father was a cook for the Army in World War II and 58 years old when Doro was born. They had a propane stove to cook on, but the oven did not work. But Doro’s father had an old wood oven and would get it going and Doro would bake all day until her father would tire of feeding it wood. It was her father who taught her to make pie crust, a recipe she still uses today. That recipe is in his old Army cookbook she has cared for all these years.

As the years passed by, Doro’s children grew to adults, and she moved to Brainerd from Kelliher in 2014. Doro spent her previous 10 years running a daycare up north and with the move to Brainerd she found an electronic job but had decided to leave that job during the Covid pandemic. As most people do, this was a time to reflect and think about what she wanted in life. Many friends and family always suggested Doro open a bakery, but that wasn’t an interest of Doro’s even though baking was her passion.

Through research she stumbled across the Cottage Baking industry and Doro decided to take the Cottage Food Producer registration training online through the Department of Agriculture. The Cottage Food Law allows individuals to make and sell certain non-potentially hazardous food and canned goods in Minnesota