KEEP AUSTIN SWEET

From inside Austin’s most renowned bakeries

By Wavy Tateosian

Since the first loaf was baked centuries ago, bread has been a constant in all societies. Historically, bakeries have always worked to serve their communities and supply bread and sustenance. But today, running a bakery and fulfilling the Austin communities’ needs is a very different task.

Austin’s bakeries are staples in the area. They provide a meeting place for Austin’s diverse people to share their love of good food, have business meetings and events, and visit with friends. Many of the bakeries incorporate outdoor patio spaces, and host arrays of live musicians or bands because of Austin’s ideal climate and its community’s desire for vibrant energy. Foodies have been attracted to Austin’s eclectic cuisines, bakeries, and live music, and some of the bakeries have been supplying Austin’s communities with quality goods for over 50 years.

Regina Estrada, the manager at Joe’s Bakery, first started working there in her freshman year of high school. After graduating from college, she didn’t have a clear plan and ended up back at the bakery.

Joe’s Bakery was founded by her grandparents in 1962, and it started as a small, community-based business that served parts of the Austin community. Now, Estrada is the sole manager of the bakery, with additional help from her grandmother and aunt.

Estrada said, “It was my grandfather’s boyhood dream to start this business. I always tell people that working at Joe’s Bakery was not my dream. It is not what I set out to do. But when I graduated college, I didn’t have a plan, and I didn’t have a job lined up.”

Joe’s Bakery hasn’t always had the familiar, relaxed atmosphere that it does today. The bakery was actually started out of Estrada’s grandparent’s house as a way to help the low-income community in East Austin.

“They would sell baked goods to the neighborhoods. Then those that couldn’t afford to buy it would sometimes get the leftover bread that they would give out to other neighbors because back in that time, East Austin was predominantly Hispanic and African American, so the demographic was very much working class,” Estrada said.

The Sour Duck Market, however, had a very different beginning. It is a casual restaurant and bakery that was created as an expansion to its sister business and food truck, called the Odd Duck. Mark Buley, an operating partner at the Sour Duck Market, opened up the restaurant in 2018 with his other partners to expand its reach further into Austin.

“My partners and I opened Sour Duck because it was the kind of place that we wanted to take our families that did not yet exist in the Austin market,” Buley said. The bakery/restaurant has an attractive outdoor patio strung with lights that invite the customers to stay awhile. It is also inspired by local farmers and purveyors, and the flour for their baked goods is milled locally as well.

For as long as he could remember, Buley wanted to be a baker or chef. He has always enjoyed celebrating his love for his family and friends with food.

Buley said, “I was five when my aunt bought me my first cookbook. Cooking and baking were a part of my DNA from that day forward.”

Bakeries often have an on-site manager or operator in charge of the bakery on a daily basis. For most bakery owners, including Buley, this role means bright and early mornings all days of the week.

“I arrive 5 days a week at 4 am. I then check in with the team and get to work on the daily bakery production as well as facility maintenance,” Buley said. For many, running a bakery seems impossible when considering everything that goes into it. For others, this is just what they’ve been doing for years.

Upper Crust Bakery is a classic in Austin that has been committed to the local community for 28 years. Upper Crust has a laid-back vibe that attracts anyone from a businesswoman grabbing a coffee on her way to work, to a retired man simply interested in reading the morning paper. Their daily fresh-baked pastries pair well with coffee, and friends and family enjoy meeting here for the perfect breakfast treat.

Upper Crust’s owner, Stephanie Schuster, works at the bakery every day, making sure daily tasks are done and that everything is

Covid, we took our menu down, and we had to let people go. Much like everyone else, we initially shut down completely for a few days and then we reworked our system so that we could hand people products out the door. We shortened our hours, too.”

The food industry especially took a hit from Covid. Shortening hours means cutting profits and also jobs. With less product being produced each day, less bake staff is needed, and accordingly, less cleaning and serving staff is needed. With new information every day from the government, actions were limited for these bakeries.

Estrada said, “It was a challenge in so many different ways because of the fact that everything was so new, the information was new. Nobody knew what was going on. So we were making decisions that were the best for our business.”

She remembers getting a phone call from the Texas congressmen the day that Covid started and the struggle of dealing with her employees and the new information on the daily. Sometimes the information was false as well. Estrada said, “It [Covid] was really hard. I think under control. She helps out the baking staff, answers phone calls and mobile orders, and handles all press requests (the bakery is largely popular in the Austin area and they get quite a few!). She loves interacting with customers and being part of the face of the business.

“Interactions with people are my favorite part of running the bakery,” Schuster said. “They’re both sometimes the hardest and the best.”

Upper Crust Bakery, just like many of these other bakeries, has had some difficulties with customers. The average customer can be fun to work with, but sometimes there is a customer who makes the jobs tricky by being rude, quickly angered, or refusing to pay. During Covid, the transition to mostly take-out orders was an especially hard change for the customers, but it was also a stress on the staff.

Schuster said, “Because of that the biggest challenge for us was happily asking my employees to pivot when change is so hard for so many people. You have to have everybody on board to make change successful. Everybody has to get it. They don’t have to like it; they have to understand it.”

Part of Joe’s Bakery’s expertise is in its family roots and its experienced staff. Estrada said, “I have one server that’s been working for me for 50 years. I have other servers that have been with us for 20, 30 years.”

This experience comes with time, and an important factor is learning your clientele. With the rich food culture that Austin is known for, bakeries often find themselves catering to the people, and they are constantly hoping to further understand their target audience. But they also must balance this with being resourceful and economical.

For example, Upper Crust is widely known for its classic cinnamon roll, and it is perhaps the most popular item on the bakery’s menu. However, this cinnamon roll had a humble beginning.

“The cinnamon rolls started out as a way to use scrap dough. We had leftover dough after we cut the edges off Danish and croissant dough and my sister looked at that and said I don’t want to waste that so she put it back together,” Schuster said. “She did it, rolled it out, cinnamon-sugared it, rolled it up, and cut it into cinnamon rolls, and that’s how it was born. It’s the single thing we do the most every single day.”

Oftentimes, getting the necessary ingredients for these products is quite difficult, especially with supply chain disruption from Covid. Today, many bakers still struggle to even obtain the basic ingredients (flour, butter, and sugar) at a reasonable price, and this is something a customer may never realize when going to a bakery.

“Customers don’t see the sheer said.

Food shortages are not the only thing that bakers have to worry about. Hiring willing, reliable employees that are good at working as a team is a constant struggle for these bakery owners too. An observable trend these days in the bakery staffing department illustrates that the work ethic of employees is becoming less acceptable, especially for those who are young and may be looking for a first job.

“The biggest issue is just having people show up. Unfortunately, the work ethic of young people has drastically changed and has just become one of the biggest issues,” Estrada said. “Yesterday I had two employees just not show up.” also agree that employees who are committed to helping their bakery and love what they do should definitely be appreciated.

“Seeing my employees content is awesome,” Schuster said.

“Seeing the product go out daily and seeing people happy to have that product are also some of my favorite parts.” volume of food supplies that you need to run a bakery like this, for example, you might spend $2,000 in one week on just butter,” Schuster said.

The best parts of running a bakery depend on the type of bakery that it is. For some smaller businesses, the most fulfilling part of the owner’s job is contributing to the making of the daily goods with the baking staff.

For Joe’s Bakery, food deliveries come in on Tuesdays or Thursdays. These are usually delivered by big commercial food suppliers, and sometimes they’ll bring around 80% of all ingredients to a bakery at once. Even with huge deliveries coming into the bakery up to two times a week, food shortages and availability still narrate the goods that they can produce.

“If we don’t have it, we just don’t have it. We have to really focus and prioritize. Like, what is our main thing? What do we absolutely have to have? I really focused on just our basics, instead of stressing out about all the little things that we don’t have,” Estrada

Unfortunately, when employees do not show up or a staff member makes a mistake, the owner usually takes the fall. But these owners

“I love making something with my hands on a daily basis, and knowing that the success of the bakery is determined by how much thought and effort I put into it,” Buley said.

For other owners, it’s all about the working environment.

“I think one of my favorite things is I get to go to work with my family. It has really been one of the reasons I really stayed,” Estrada said.

But Estrada doesn’t just mean her immediate family, like her aunt and her grandmother, who she works with every day. She also means the people who come to the bakery regularly and enjoy a pastry while enjoying each others’ company. She’s talking about the community that is impacted by a simple shop with its striped awning and verandah, and all its charming sweets that sit beckoningly inside. She’s talking about the bakeries that define a city’s culture.

INGREDIENTS:

For the dough:¾ c warm milk2 ¼ tsp quick rise yeast¼ c granulated sugar1 egg + 1 egg yolk¼ c melted butter3 c bread flour + flour for dusting¾ tsp salt

For the filling:⅔ c brown sugar1 ½ tbsp cinnamon¼ c softened butter

SERVINGS: 9 rolls

PREP TIME: 2 hours

COOK TIME: 20 min

TOTAL TIME: 2 hours 20 min