Regenerative Baking

Today’s guest is community-supported baker Don Guerra, founder of Barrio Bread in Tucson, Arizona. He won the James Beard Award for Outstanding Baker in 2022, and takes pride in bringing together a network of farmers, millers, wholesale buyers and consumers to support each other and build a resilient and diverse local grain chain. Listen in for an interview jam-packed with information about heritage grains of the Southwest, Don’s journey with entrepreneurship and history with anthropology, how he got connected with Native Seeds Search and became a major part of the effort to bring back Sonoran White Wheat, and much much more. Full show notes and further reading links available at dresslerparsons.com/regenerativebakingInstagram: @regenerativebaking and @dresslerparsonsPatreon: patreon.com/regenerativebaking

What is a seed bank if not both the original economy AND a model for a regenerative economy? The seeds are saved, shared with farmers and gardeners, and then as the crops grow, a portion of those seeds also get saved and re-circulated. In this week's episode, Dressler is joined by Amy Smith, the E-Commerce Manager of Native Seeds/SEARCH in Tucson, Arizona. Native Seeds/SEARCH was founded in 1983 in response to the concern of farmers, gardeners, Indigenous community members, and conservationists about the loss of seed diversity. They currently steward more than 1800 regional seed varieties in a climate-controlled seed bank, all of which are uniquely adapted to the arid landscapes that extend from southern Colorado to central Mexico. Tune in for a discussion about Southwest agriculture, harvesting mesquite pods, the importance of arid-adapted seeds as the climate warms, the resurgence of Sonoran White Wheat, and so much more. Full show notes and further reading links available at dresslerparsons.com/regenerativebakingPatreon ($5 tier: get a brand new watercolor-illustrated postcard every month!): patreon.com/regenerativebakingInstagram: @regenerativebaking and @dresslerparsons 

Could a fine dining restaurant be a place to feel at home, to eat for free? Telly Justice, head chef and co-owner of HAGS, says absolutely. Centering queerness in every corner of the restaurant and subsidizing a weekly pay-what-you-can brunch via a vibrant tasting menu the rest of the week, Telly and the rest of the HAGS team have created something remarkable in Lower Manhattan. Tune in for a chat about the freedom of pop-ups, burnout in restaurant kitchens, building a completely different kind of fine dining space, how the HAGS team collaborates on the menu, and so much more. Full show notes and further reading links available at dresslerparsons.com/regenerativebakingInstagram: @regenerativebaking and @dresslerparsonsPatreon: patreon.com/regenerativebaking 

How can the scaffolding and infrastructure of our world be repurposed to build a better future? How can social practice art open avenues for collaboration and and cooperation? This episode features an interview with Caroline Woolard, an artist, educator and technologist who's currently the Head of Strategy at Pollinator.coop. We discuss her past and current projects, all of which focus on building networks between people in one way or another, glimpsing alternative economies. Full show notes and further reading links available at dresslerparsons.com/regenerativebakingInstagram: @regenerativebaking and @dresslerparsonsPatreon: patreon.com/regenerativebaking

We're kicking off Season 3 of Regenerative Baking with Raeghn Draper, the executive director of CHAAD (Chicago Hospitality Accountability and Advocacy Database), an organization providing resources and information to restaurant workers, as well as, in Raeghn's words, imagining a hospitality industry that supports thriving and sustainable lives for the people who put in the bulk of the labor. Tune in for a discussion that clearly illustrates the current hospitality industry, as well as bright and expansive future possibilities. Full show notes and further reading links available at dresslerparsons.com/regenerativebakingInstagram: @regenerativebaking and @dresslerparsonsPatreon: patreon.com/regenerativebaking

We're back with another thematically-organized summary of Regenerative Baking's last nine episodes, as told via clips of guests that felt like they were in conversation with each other. This season’s theme was, “What does it look like to bake with place in mind?”, and the clips in this summary cover the concept of “place” from every angle: from being involved with your local community, to making desserts on a glacier in Alaska, to the effects of gentrification and colonization on food cultures, to yourself and your own food memories as "place," and how that connects you to the food system around you, and much, much more. Full show notes and further reading links (for each excerpted episode) available at dresslerparsons.com/regenerativebakingInstagram: @regenerativebaking and @dresslerparsons

Patrick Shaw-Kitch was the head baker at Blue Hill at Stone Barns for five years, and is now opening Brooklyn Granary and Mill (@brooklyngranaryandmill), a flour mill and bakery in Brooklyn that will source grain directly from regenerative farmers, and sell bread, pastries, and fresh-milled flour to customers. In this very bread-nerdy episode, Patrick and Dressler dig into the nitty-gritty hows and whys of whole grain bread baking, independent seed breeders, the best ways to test out new flours, which grains are destined to be bread, Patrick's business model and goals for Brooklyn Granary and Mill, the economics of regional grains, and so, so much more.  Full show notes and further reading links available at dresslerparsons.com/regenerativebakingInstagram: @regenerativebaking and @dresslerparsonsPatreon: patreon.com/regenerativebaking 

Little Loaf Bakeshop (@littleloafbakeshop) is a queer woman-and-trans-owned bakery in Poughkeepsie, New York. In this episode, Dressler talks to co-owner Colleen Orlando about her journey in the food world, vegan recipe testing, building community through pastries, the inclusive culture of the bakery, how queerness shows up in baking, stoneground flour, vegan cheese and butter, how limitations can actually fuel creativity, and so much more.  Full show notes and further reading links available at dresslerparsons.com/regenerativebakingInstagram: @regenerativebaking and @dresslerparsonsPatreon: patreon.com/regenerativebaking

Luis Medina recently opened The Flour Bender Bakeshop (@flourbendertroy), a real-life regenerative bakery in Troy, New York--and we recorded this interview shortly before the opening, so it's full of the very potent excitement of celebrating a bakery about to be born. Tune in for a discussion of how the bakery came to be, Luis's plans for his menu and suppliers, dreams of a community space, his background in food systems and nonprofits, waxing poetic about grains, the challenges of implementing regenerative frameworks as a small business, and much, much more.  Full show notes and further reading links available at dresslerparsons.com/regenerativebakingInstagram: @regenerativebaking and @dresslerparsons  

Carla Finley (@apt2bread) has seen her Brooklyn apartment-based micro-bakery take on a handful of evolutions. From the early days of the pandemic shutdowns to a full-swing bread operation, to slowing down and re-calibrating with an eye toward the future, Apt. 2 Bread has resiliently ebbed and flowed like the sourdough starter at the heart of the operation. In this episode, Carla and Dressler chat on a couch in the (temporarily) packed-up bakery and discuss Carla’s food industry journey, her love of bread, the elusive question of work-life balance when working in kitchens, the concept of not-for-profit restaurants, a technique to make cinnamon rolls especially soft, her plans for a hands-on European bread education (which she’s now fully in the midst of, and chronicling via social media and Substack), and so much more. Full show notes and further reading links available at dresslerparsons.com/regenerativebaking Instagram: @regenerativebaking and @dresslerparsons

The dream of turning a garden into beautiful baked goods comes to life with Hayley McKee (@stickyfingersbakery), an Australian baker and author of the cookbook "Sticky Fingers, Green Thumb," which features almost sixty recipes celebrating vegetables, herbs, and edible flowers in cakes and other sweet snacks. In this episode, Hayley and Dressler chat about fennel in cakes, hands-on food education for kids, bold and unexpected flavors in desserts, finding community gardens near you, native Australian plants, Hayley's post-punk musical past, the history of feminist restaurants and cafes, and so much more. Full show notes and further reading links available at dresslerparsons.com/regenerativebaking Instagram: @regenerativebaking and @dresslerparsons

What memories do certain foods bring back for you? And how do you go about preserving those memories? Estefania Trujillo Preciado (@iamestefa) is a chef, educator, and artist documenting intergenerational culinary stories in Colombia. She teaches a class on food memories and all their inherent magic--and in fact, we get into magical realism a lot in this episode, along with Colombian produce, using video to preserve ancestral cooking techniques, a traditional Colombian dessert that's also a community gathering, collages, creatively avoiding censorship, the power and possibility of food memories, and much, much more. Full show notes and further reading links available at dresslerparsons.com/regenerativebaking Instagram: @regenerativebaking and @dresslerparsons

Andrea Aliseda (@andrea__aliseda) is a Mexican-American recipe developer, writer, and forthcoming cookbook author based in LA. In this episode of Regenerative Baking, with the season 2 theme of "What does it look like to bake with place in mind?" we cover contemporary Mexican-American chefs baking with Indigenous ingredients like nixtamal and masa harina; Andrea's forthcoming plant-based Mexican cookbook, and her journey from vegetarianism to veganism and back again; the expansive possibilities of Mexican cuisine; getting bitten by the cooking bug; the political history of bake sales, including one she's baking for on August 3rd called Bakes For Palestine; and so much more. Full show notes and further reading links available at dresslerparsons.com/regenerativebaking Instagram: @regenerativebaking and @dresslerparsons

What would it look like to step outside of the ingredients we’re used to baking with, and to hone in on some officially-labeled underutilized crops? This episode dives into just that with writer and entrepreneur Shreema Mehta (@climatecookery). She has a Masters in Public Policy and Conservation Biology, a background in journalism and PR, and launched a tamarind hot sauce company in 2020 after reading a report on underutilized crops from the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations. Listen in for what it means for something to be labeled an underutilized crop, the realities of starting a small food business, linking environmental science to pop culture and food history, crop databases, universal basic income, foraging in New York City, and so much more. Full show notes and further reading links available at dresslerparsons.com/regenerativebaking Instagram: @regenerativebaking and @dresslerparsons

The overarching question of Season 2 of Regenerative Baking is "What does it look like to bake with place in mind?" And we're kicking it off with Rose McAdoo (@rosemcadoo), a brilliant food artist who takes baking with place in mind to extremes. Splitting her time between Alaska and Antarctica, Rose makes cakes that communicate climate science, often using the bitter wilderness as her pastry kitchen. In this episode, Rose talks to Dressler about her journey from New York wedding cake decorator to the Antartica search-and-rescue team, to Alaska glacier-guiding, to a surprise backwoods Alaska dessert project with Rose Wilde, and much, much more. Full show notes and further reading links available at dresslerparsons.com/regenerativebaking Instagram: @regenerativebaking and @dresslerparsons

This is a thematically-organized summary of Regenerative Baking's first nine episodes, as told via clips of guests that felt like they were in conversation with each other. The result is a dynamic, conversational episode that names and explores the main themes that emerged throughout the first Regenerative Baking season; growing sweeteners and grains, cover-cropping/soil health, baking with fruit, the realities of farming at hand scale, fermentation in its broadest sense, "loving the solution" and not just "fixing a problem," the complexities of our current food system, some of the effects climate change is already having on agriculture, building community via food, and an in-depth discussion of whole grain baking.  Full show notes and further reading links (for this episode and all the excerpted episodes) available at dresslerparsons.com/regenerativebakingInstagram: @regenerativebaking and @dresslerparsons

Katie Gourley(@k.e.gourley) is a farmer and baker deeply rooted in biodiversity and alternative economies. As one half of La Merenda Farm (@lamerendafarm), she operates a beautiful heirloom bean CSA, and also bakes seasonal whole-grain cakes through her small-scale community baking project, Sweet Clover Baking. Katie also has a Masters in Urban Planning with Distinction from the Harvard University Graduate School of Design, where her thesis on community seed saving and alternative economies was the recipient of the Harvard Urban Planning and Design Thesis Prize. Listen in for a deep dive on seed libraries, sharing economies, biodiversity in baking, zines, farming challenges, and dreams of a more caring world.  Full show notes and further reading links available at dresslerparsons.com/regenerativebaking Instagram: @regenerativebaking and @dresslerparsons

Jack Algiere is the Director of Agroecology at Stone Barns Center for Food & Agriculture (@stonebarns), which is also home to the two-Michelin-starred Blue Hill at Stone Barns. First brought in to design the center’s boldly experimental organic farm in 2004, Jack Algiere warmly recalls his farming history, some of the projects Stone Barns is working on right now, his philosophy around farming, agroecology, and much more. Full show notes and further reading links available at dresslerparsons.com/regenerativebakingInstagram: @regenerativebaking and @dresslerparsons

Rose Wilde (@trosewilde) is a powerhouse of a pastry chef—she’s a former human rights lawyer turned writer, master food preserver, master gardener, and chef-owner of Red Bread in Los Angeles. She’s also the author of the fabulous new whole-grain baking cookbook, Bread and Roses: 100+ Grain Forward Recipes Featuring Global Ingredients and Botanicals. Listen in for an exploration of human rights and kitchens, developing your own sense of whole grain taste, replacing baking powder with sourdough, cultivating community, and much, much more. Full show notes and further reading links available at dresslerparsons.com/regenerativebakingInstagram: @regenerativebaking and @dresslerparsons

Rachel Fukumoto’s Instagram handle is @thepastryfarmer, and she’s trying to bridge the worlds of pastry and farming in Hawaii. Right now, she’s a full-time farmer at Big Island Tea, a regenerative tea farm, while her dreams of tea-inspired pastries gently steep. Tune in for a chat about Hawaii’s biggest beginner farming program, the endless possibility of tarts, farming in a rainforest, baking with local ingredients, vanilla in Oahu, and much, much more. Full show notes and further reading links available at dresslerparsons.com/regenerativebakingInstagram: @dresslerparsons and @regenerativebaking