Sarah "The Bread Lady" Gonzalez

00:00Welcome to Nashville Restaurant Radio. The tastiest hour of talk in Music City. Now here's your host, Brandon Styll. Hello, Music City and welcome to Nashville Restaurant Radio. My name is Brandon Styll and I am joined with Jen Ichikawa. Hi, Jen. Hi. This is fun because normally the intros, I just get to like kind of do myself at midnight and they're like lonely and I go through this whole list of things. But now we get to start off and like talk. Yeah. How you been? How's your weekend? I'm good. How was your? My weekend was great. I'm preparing to go to the beach. So, you know, and like mowed the yard and yeah, I pressure wash the driveway because that's what most people do when they get ready to go to the beaches.

01:04I need to pressure wash the driveway. Okay. Isn't that a normal thing? I love pressure washer videos. I've never pressure washed anything but have you ever seen a video of somebody pressure washing? It just threw my own cornea. It's so good. It's like, it's very soothing and it's like instant gratification. I love that. What's that called? Like the thing that the ISDR or what's it called? AMSR. AMSR. AMSR. Is it like AMSR to you? No, I don't need the sound. I just want the, I just like the clean, not clean. I always like to like, when I pressure wash, I always like to write like messages to my wife in the driveway and I'll be like, I love you, you're greater. I'll write like, hey, shouldn't you be cleaning or something? Just as like a joke. And she loves it when I do stuff like that. But, and I like have her go like, go upstairs and look at the driveway. And she's like, either flip me a bird or she's like, oh my God, that's so sweet.

02:04Uh-huh. How sassy I'm feeling. Mine would be dirty. I would be like, get naked. And you'd be like, what the hell? I have a basketball goal. So I, last time I like made a three point line and I did like a whole free throw line. And I created like the paint and like, and then I created like, I made like a bunch of circles because we like to play horse because we're way too old to play any competitive basketballs. Like horse is the game that we play. So I made like all these Xs. I made a four point line and my wife was like, what the hell is that? I'm like, this is a total horse basketball court. And she's like, yeah, I am really ready for you to finish the rest of the driveway. So that's, hence, hey, let's finish the driveway. Happy wife, happy life. That sounds fun. I know, right? I thought it was pretty fun. So we are back. We're, we've got a lot of fun episodes coming up. Let's talk about Nashville restaurant radio for a second. We did an episode of the roundup and we didn't put it out because I, you know what?

03:08I enjoyed the conversation because it was just like you and I talking, but we'd already, we kind of had this, here's my thought, okay. We went over what we wanted to talk about earlier in the day. And I was like, what do you want to talk about? And then we had these hilarious conversations about all this stuff we want to talk about. And then when it came time to actually talk about it, I felt like all of the original hilarity had already passed. Does that make sense? Yeah, I mean, we talk a lot. We talked too much. That was because our initial conversation, I looked at the phone when we hung up and I was like, I haven't talked to anyone on the phone for two hours and I don't know how long, but like. But yeah, I felt like we like laughed so hard at all of these goofy stories. And then we tried to tell the goofy stories again. And I was like, I feel like I'm telling, I feel like I'm telling a story versus an actual reaction. So if you want to watch it, it's out there on YouTube. I didn't delete it on YouTube. I did delete it on Facebook.

04:09So you can go back and you can watch it and you can hear me just complain that we don't have enough people and all this stuff. I don't know, it was really funny the first time, but there was a fantastic interview with Brian Lee Weaver that I put out for everybody to listen to and hopefully you enjoyed it. That guy's amazing. We've got a bunch of shows coming up. And in this show, you're gonna hear the Bread Lady. Sarah Gonzalez, she wrote a book called Baking with the Bread Lady, 100 Delicious Recipes You Can Master at Home. She's got a great story. We find that our story's kind of intertwined as children. It's really kind of a crazy small world part of this thing. And then if you like to bake or have never baked, she tells a great story. And then we talked about some cool baking advice, right? Are you gonna go bake now? Sure, I am not good at that. At like, it's a bold claim, right? That you can master at home. That's a bold claim.

05:11And we talked about that. I don't know that I can master that. Now I'm not like self-deprecating or anything. It's just, I have skillsets. What's the Liam Neeson? I have a very specific set of skills. Yeah, that's not it. I will find you and I will kill you. That's also not in it, but as much as that's not in it, so too is baking. I try every season to bake something and I just end up sad about it because it's flat or it's deflated or whatever. So like I love when people, I love eating big things. Hey, I love, I do too. And you know what else I love? I love your shirt. Thank you, yes, we're twinning today. Twinning, if you see me, we are wearing pink shirts in these pink shirts. I'm gonna stand up so you can see the shirt. The pink shirt says Marible and I've got my Nashville belt buckle rocking today, yes. Marible, they're pink shirts because every Monday for the month of October, we are donating 10% of our sales at Marible to the Breast, Tennessee Breast Cancer Coalition where they are, they sponsor women who have breast cancer and really can't afford it.

06:25It's a very expensive thing when you get sick. There's a lot of medical bills. What they do is they find women who need some help and they sponsor them. So we are excited to be giving back to them. So if you're looking for a place to eat this month, Mondays at Marible comes to see us. And if you are out there, we wanna encourage you also to do something along the same lines. If you can pick a day and you wanna bring people out, because if you wanna pick one day this month, send me a direct message at Brandon underscore NRR. Let me know, I wanna talk about it. I wanna talk about it on the show. I wanna get people to your restaurant because I am passionate about saving women. I think that I've had, well, I went to a few, I know a good friend of ours lost his wife recently and she was very young and it's very, very sad. And another friend of mine just lost his wife two days ago to breast cancer. And it's just one of those things that it's this month, there's so many facts about breast cancer that we just wanna get the word out and we want people to go get checked.

07:36Start self-exam, start going in. And if you're a woman, I think it's age 30, start going and having your doctor check for that because that's very, very important. And you can find out early detection is key. And we wanna save the women. We want y'all to be around for a long time and we wanna find a cure and all of that. So awareness, raising money, helping that's how we build community, right? Absolutely. We'd like to invite you along for the journey. So if you want us to talk about it, you wanna get a bunch of people in, donate some money, let us know, send me a DM, let's get you involved. You wanna jump into this episode? Yeah, let's do it. All right, let's jump in right now. Sarah, the bread lady, Gonzalez. Yeah, so we are so excited today to be welcoming in Sarah, the bread lady, Gonzalez. She is, she's an author.

08:37She's a baker. She wrote a book called Baking with the Bread Lady, 100 Delicious Recipes You Can Master at Home. How you doing, Sarah? I am fantastic. Thank you so much for having me on. And yes, it's interesting to add author to like the list of things that I do. So I don't know, it's fun anyway. How does one become an author? Because I often like people that write books, how do you even start that process? Do you just like know somebody who is a publisher and you're like, they're like, hey, you should write a book. And then you kind of get talked into it or did you have to like seek somebody out? Like how do you start to write a book? How does this process happen? I think it's different for everybody. In the thick of being in the business, and I have a friend, I don't know if you know her, Mignon Francois, she owns the Cupcake Collection. Yeah, Cupcake Collection, yeah, of course. So I love her so much. She and I met at some events down here in Spring Hill and just became really good friends, had to work together on a King Cake project and a handful of other things.

09:43And so she would come down on her way to New Orleans if she was driving and she just said, okay, so what are other things that you wanna do? And the top two things I mentioned was a show and a book. So the, I guess a couple of days after we closed, I went to go see her. That was the weekend that her place had gotten broken into. And I'm like, we both need a hug. Mignon needs a hug, I need a hug. And so she's like, okay, cool, it's great to see you, but you said that you wanted to write a book, so hold please. And then she had a connection at HarperCollins and was just like, I wanna hook you up with this. I've seen your writing online and everything else that you've done. You need to do this. And so I'm like, okay, well, I'm still kind of reeling from the whole, I just shut my bakery down, but sure, let's take this on because I don't like saying no to stuff. So I was just sort of like, sure, what's the worst that's gonna happen? They're gonna say no. So I kind of sold them on the idea of like the whole family cookbook kind of thing because a lot of the recipes in the book are about family.

10:43So it was like, it was, yeah, they're like, we love it. That's great, let's publish it. I'm like, really? So I guess it was one of the things that they manifested more than anything else. But yeah, it was really cool. It wasn't what I thought I was gonna do next. But I think when you say goodbye to a big thing and you're kind of free falling for a second, kind of in that weird like liminal space, something comes up and you're like, yeah, let's say yes to that. Let's just say yes. So. I think that's so amazing. And what I get out of that is, I don't know, I pray a lot and I look at like her being in your life randomly and the whole thing and then her saying, I know somebody, that time in Spring Hill, you being in that place, talking to her, telling her those things, people like her that are going to make things happen, like they just don't come around. Do you think that those kinds of things are meant to be? Like, how do you explain that?

11:45I think definitely, especially with her, it's really interesting because there's just something so magical about her specifically that when she's around, you just always feel like there's so much joy or there's so much to this or so much that. And on her. She's electric. She super is. And we had this bakery playlist, I think it was like 500 songs of like old jazz or old music or something like that. And so there's this Johnny Cash song called Breaking Bread. And I love it. It's such a gorgeous song that I actually hand painted the lyrics in the bathroom of the bakery. Now, every time that Mignon would come on, it wouldn't matter if the playlist was on shuffle or if it just happened to be playing through, that song inevitably came on every single time she was in the shop. And I'm like, there's something weird about this. Just the fact that that was like, not necessarily that we pulled our mission statement from that song, but that whole idea of like feeding people. And it was just so much more about the people than it was about just making delicious stuff and being like, look how great we are or whatever.

12:50It was like, no, we're here to like serve people. And then just that was just her, there was just kind of her whole thing too, is that she's so much about the people and she's so much about just like this, just this joyous infectious energy. And it was, every time she came in the shop, it was magical. So I just, yeah, she's such a cool friend. I'm like, I'm so glad that we just got to, serendipitously get to know each other. I love people like that, that just give off an energy that you just kind of feed off of. And they, like every time you see them, they inspire you and you just want to be around them. I think that's so awesome. Who is that for you, Brandon? Who is that for me? Yeah. Gosh, you know what? There's so many people that really do that for me. And it can come in, it comes in the weirdest times. Like it's never when I seek it. It's never like when I go find it. It's all, it's like at a gas station when I'm stopping to buy, like if I stop like in a random gas station to get like, I like old candy, right?

13:52So they'll get like, if I find lemon heads that are like stale, I am over the moon. But like I'll stop somewhere and submit a gas station and be like, hey, how are you today? And I'm like, oh my gosh, I wasn't expecting that. And somebody just blow me away. And I'll just think like, while this person is taking money all day long, just doing transactional things all day long, yet they have this fire inside. And those kinds of people inspire me. Those people will be like, you know what? I can be what do you want? The 25 cents. And it just can be just like, is whatever they want. But people that really just grab a hold of life and just, I don't know, those people inspire me. And they happen in few and far places. So we're here to talk about Sarah and here's my question for you. And this is, I wanna hear your background. I wanna know where you came from. And I'm gonna ask you that question by reading a review that somebody wrote of your book. Okay. Okay. I haven't read any of the reviews, so. I want you to explain this review.

14:54This book is terrible. Oh, no, no, hold on. No, I'm just kidding. That's not the review. That's not the review. They're all wonderful. Don't give me a heart attack. This will be a very, very bad podcast. I thought this review, this review was by a Amazon customer. Okay, Amazon customer wrote this. Okay. Delicious in filling tummies and soul. That's the title of the review. If you've ever jumped off a cliff and built a plane on the way down, this book is for you. Besides the treat of hearing stories read by the author with all the love, sincerity and humor that only a person who lived the memory can convey, Baking with the Bread Lady will immediately send your mind to your favorite food memories, sharing snacks, satisfying cravings and loving on your community and turning strangers into family. The story brings to life the mouthwatering recipes to life. And if you haven't already run to your kitchen to see what you can pull together, you'll be heading that way shortly.

15:56Aw. I feel like there's so much to unpack in that because I haven't read the book. Like, if you ever jumped off a cliff and built a plane on the way down, this book is for you. Can you explain that? That's sort of like a running theme, I think, through my life. I am really good at saying yes to stuff that I don't know how to do or that I have no idea how it's gonna turn out and then just sort of be able to land the plane. I don't, like, I have no idea. But yeah, like, back in 2010, I met my husband in January. We got married, or we got engaged in March and we got married the last day of July, all within 2010. So like, we went from like, sort of seeing each other at like church to being like, oh yeah, I'd be like, oh, I actually really like you too. Like, I guess we're getting married now. And then when we moved out to Nashville from, I hate to say the C word, but California. But some years ago, we made a bakery.

16:58We fed a lot of people. We moved here for, I think, the right reasons. But yeah, so we came on vacation to Nashville for a week and we bought a house, had to go home and tell our families that we were moving 2,000 miles away. And it was just like, it was like, what are we gonna do? I guess, I mean, at the time, it was a lot less expensive as to be able to come here and like build community. And there were a lot more people that were like our age and that kind of stuff. So it just felt like the right thing. So it was just another thing where we were just like, you know what? Sure, let's just, let's move and see what happens. Like what's the worst that's gonna happen? We're gonna get some, we have to move back home. So, and then six months later. I love that by the way. Oh yeah. I mean, that's adventure. You just got married. Like, why not? Why stick to some tradition where we have to live here and do this and this? Like, I like move 2,000 miles away and let's see what we can't, what adventure we can't find, right? Yeah, it was, it was, it was absolutely crazy. It was, it was nuts. But, and you know, there's a lot of, especially with that, because you don't know each other that well.

18:01And it was like three, three and a half or so years between us, like getting married and us moving. But after moving around Southern California, like where we could afford was not a very nice place. And so it's like, okay, I can't walk my daughter to school. It was, it was Fullerton. We lived like, we lived in a less than 2000 square foot house. We paid more than $2,000 in rent. I didn't have a dishwasher or conditioning or a driveway. And on Wednesdays you had to move your car at noon or else you got a $50 fine for parking on the wrong side of the street for street sweeping. Almost all of the street parking was taken up by all of the sororities and fraternities that were kind of spotted throughout. So you'd wake up and there'd be like beer cans on the front lawn. You'd be like, cool, I don't even drink beer, but this is great. California has had a party. I'm telling you, that sounds like a dream, doesn't it, Jen? Yeah, my dream for sure. I mean, it was just kind of where it was. Like I really liked the house. It was old 1940s. It's like, I love old houses and stuff.

19:03So it was like, yeah, we can live in a whole house, old house, and then we kind of look around and go, actually, it's not that great right here, but okay. So I think- I'm originally from Orange County. So I know the area a little bit. I'm one of those people too. You've been here my whole life. Yeah, I've been here 33 years, but never like that. Oh wow, okay. Like you are local. You are so local. Yeah. I think that's the thing is- I'm still finding Cali. And then you like mesh and then you're here for a while and you kind of get acclimated because there is a culture shock between like the West Coast and then like here. So, you know, it's been a fun learning thing, but yeah, where were you from in Orange County? I was in Laguna Hills. I was born in Mission Viejo. I went to Laguna Hills High School. No kidding. Yeah, I lived right around the corner from there. I used to take swim lessons at the pool there. Oh my gosh. Yeah, we lived where the Ralph's is, or I guess back then Alpha Beta or whatever it was. I lived in the neighborhood directly behind it.

20:03Yeah, you can see Saddleback right behind you there. Yeah, yeah. That's insane. The world is so small. That's nuts. I went to Loma Arena Elementary School. Did you really? I don't know if that's still there. If that's the thing, you can remember that. Yeah, I went there too. You went to Loma Arena? I did, yes. Yeah, I had Mrs. Lynn Blatt for kindergarten and I don't know if Mrs. Davis was still, Ms. Davis was there for sixth grade or whatever, Mr. Simmons. No, I left third grade. My first year was fourth grade here in Nashville. Oh, okay, okay. That's insane. I had Ms. Schwambeck was my kindergarten teacher. My brother had Schwambeck. This is a very small world. Wow, wow. Yes. That's crazy. How old is your brother? He is, let's see, I'm gonna be 39. He's 36, so yeah. Okay, I'm 42, so that makes sense. It's like seven years later. We were there too, so yeah. Oh my gosh.

21:04There you go, I don't think I've, I've met a lot of people from California who knew the area I was from. Never somebody that went to my elementary school. Yeah, no, we were probably in the same classroom because Schwambeck taught the morning and then Lynn Blatt taught the afternoon. So my brother had to- I think my sister had Lynn Blatt. Okay. Oh my gosh. Yeah, she's a couple years younger. That's crazy. I have goosebumps, that's insane. Wow. Look at this. Jen's just over here going, this is nuts. I'm from Florida, so I can't. We left beach areas for a landlocked place. Yeah. What are we doing? I mean, we lived, you know, Laguna Hills, it's like, what, 10 minutes away from the ocean. We like never went because the beach wasn't going anywhere. It's like, if you weren't a part of a beach community, it seemed like, whatever. You could go- Well, I had grandparents in Newport and my other grandparents were in Huntington, so we, we did plenty of beach. We just went to Newport and dropped us off 52nd Street. My parents would drop us off at like nine o'clock in the morning and pick us up at like seven o'clock at night.

22:07Oh my gosh. And that just like terrifies me now because I have kids that are like, I have an eight-year-old and like, if he's outside, I'm like, I need to be outside. Just dropping my kid off at the ocean in the morning and then picking him up 12 hours later and hoping he's still alive. I, there's no way. I love his lifeguards, right? We made it, we're okay. Yeah, I think, I don't know. I can't say if we're tougher or not. I was definitely an inside bookworm kind of kid. So like, I think, yeah, it took me until I was 11 to figure out how to ride a bicycle. So I was not, no gross motor skills on that at all. I know I rode my bike to school. I rode my bike to Loma Marina. Oh, okay, okay. I moved here when I was nine. So I was like six, seven, eight years old riding my bike to school. Yeah, no, I'm also an indoor friend and like you guys are like, oh, you moved away from the beach. I'm like, no, I didn't. I grew up in Tampa, which is like an hour from the beach.

23:08And I'm like, I don't, I'm pale. I burn, I like, I'm like, no, I wanna be inside like all the time. Like I am not an outdoors. When this airs, when people are listening to this, I will be at the beach. Yeah. Oh, okay. Yeah. I'm going at the end of this week, I'm going to Alabama. Oh, okay. I've never been to Orange, or Orange Beach is where we're going. I've never been to Orange Beach before, but it was the only place that had a place available because it's fall break. Oh yeah, yeah. We've got way off track from how you got to Nashville and you came to Nashville on vacation. You found Spring Hill, which by the way, we used to live in Spring Hill. Oh, okay. It's funny how all these lives like we have other, I have other guests. I'm like, oh my gosh, we have the same things. We used to live right off Port Royal. Do you live right off Port Royal? Sort of, yeah. They like between Port Royal and Duplex. Okay, yeah. Okay, there you go. Right where we used to live too.

24:10It's crazy small world. So you have a, so you got here, were you a baker before? Were you like baking in California? Not professionally, but like. Yeah, no, not professionally. I grew up baking like in the kitchen with family. So like my grandma and her four daughter, they would just all get together at grandma's house in Westminster. And I went to Westminster High School. You went now? Went to Westminster High School. Oh, you did? I came back and went to Westminster High School for two years, the Lions. That's nuts. Yeah, we lived like six houses down from my grandma until like half way through kindergarten and then we moved down to Laguna. And then my parents just within the last like 10 years sold the house or something like that. And they were in Westminster? Yeah, they like, well, I don't remember the major cross streets, but Primrose. Golden West. Oh yeah, my mom went there for college for over a year or so. So that's insane. But yeah, so I just kind of grew up doing that.

25:13I ended up going to the Fashion Institute. I got a degree in like event planning and all that kind of stuff. So I can do everything from set design, event planning, store, like design, a lot of those kinds of things. But I never really wanted to start doing the baking thing right away. But then when we moved out here, I decided I didn't really wanna do weddings anymore. And I'm like, well, what am I gonna do? And then I found out that the farmer's market here was so inexpensive to sign up for. And I'm like, okay, whatever the cost is that's gonna, that I'm gonna have to like invest to get started in this, I'm willing to bet exactly that much that I'll be able to make it back at the end of summer. Like the same thing with plants. Like I will not spend more on a plant than I'm willing to bet that I can keep it alive. But the same kind of thing with the business where I'm like, sure, let's try this. And then there's a Spring Hill Facebook page I announced on there that I was gonna start baking for the farmer's market. I had no idea how much to make for the first week, but sold out in like 30 minutes. And I'm like, oh, they really like bread here.

26:17And they're like, yeah, we don't have a storefront bakery in Spring Hill. And I'm like, you don't? Like what city doesn't have a storefront bakery, but apparently- Spring Hill. Yeah, so I started doing that every week. Each week I made more. And each week the line got longer. And it was crazy where it was just sort of a, sure, we'll just do this for the summer and see what happens. And then all of a sudden it happened. So it was super crazy. Sorry. That's okay. That's amazing. And so you just, it just from demand, you just said, okay, I'm in, I'm gonna do a storefront. And then you had a storefront. And now the pandemic happens. Well, the store is a little bit more crazy than that. Well, tell us the story, what do you got? So that was like April of 15 to end of August, 2015. And then they kind of peters out because the school ends or school starts and then nobody goes to the farmer's market anymore it feels like. So I quit, I helped my, or just kind of ended for the year.

27:19I figured I'd do something else for the winter, but I helped my friend do the first art walk in the city. I'm like, I can do events. Sure, let's do this. And then sometime in the middle of September, people are like, we miss you. You need to sell again. Can we order it from you, whatever. So we ended up calling tractor supply because there's a snow cone guy that sits out there. And I'm like, okay, cool. So I just called and I was like, how much insurance do you need? Do you need like a weekly payment or whatever? And they said, we've heard of you, come on down. You can just set up in our parking lot. How, what, what days are you gonna be here? So we know we can tell our customers that you're gonna be here. And I'm like, what? So Ellie had like a little silver Camry and a plastic table and table cloth and just like loaded up my table and sat there for three hours and sold stuff, you know, and people were like, they would come. Sometimes we were out in 15 minutes. Sometimes it took the full three hours. And we did that for a while. How much do you make on a day like that? How much bread can you sell? Like, like a thousand dollars worth of bread or like, because bread's not inherently expensive.

28:22Like how much bread can you fit in a Camry? I mean, I think, I think it was like, like three, $400, I guess, which was pretty good, especially considering that we weren't making with commercial equipment. I really, like, you know, those oven and a half, that's what I had. So I can make 36 cookies at one time. So yeah, so I would bake for pretty much two days straight leading up to a sell day and make as much as I possibly could and go and sell it. And then from there, there were people that were emailing, asking about events. So we sold at Ripa Villa, they had a wine tasting event and they're like, it's a six hour event. So you need to make a lot. So I baked for 36 hours straight and took naps during the timers to be able to like, it was insane. I was like, your oven actually, fun fact, your oven will turn off after 12 hours of not using it. So if you go on vacation and leave it, there's a safety on it that will turn it off. But the problem is, is if you have banana breads lined up in there and you're at that 12 hour mark and you don't turn it off and turn it back on to reset the 12 hour thing, the oven will turn off while stuff is in there.

29:35So if it's just on for 12 hours at a time, at any time, it will cut off after 12 hours? Yeah. I was today years old when I learned that. There you go, yeah. You're waking up from a nap and having my timer go off and being like, why is it wrong? Why is the oven off? It was, yeah. So we did that. And then I got a call from this executive chef that lived in the neighborhood. And he's like, can you, at this point, I kind of dabbled in brioche a little bit, but not actually made like slider buns. And I'm like, yeah, sure. How many do you need? And he's like, oh, I need like three, 400. It's the governor's executive chef that called me, Chef Steve. So he called me and now like, I'm not even a year into this whole thing and I'm baking for the governor of Tennessee. I'm sorry, what? Ward, Stephen Ward? Steve Ward, yes. Okay, okay, okay.

30:35Stephen Ward. So did you, were you able to do that? Yeah, I did. I did it for that. And then I did it for Christmas that year too. And it was just like, I guess all during that Christmas season, because I think he called me on Thanksgiving or somewhere around there. So yeah, so he's just started, I would make new stuff and take it to the tractor supply and sell it. And then I started taking on little projects like that. And then at some point, we had started looking for a commercial kitchen or like a storefront. The way that Spring Hill is set up is kind of wonky. There's not a whole lot of storefront, especially in the older part of town. So we had started looking at places and like weird things would happen where things would fall through, where they wanted like some special like World War III insurance and like the stack, the lease agreement was like 35 pages long. I'm like, this is stupid for less than a thousand square feet. Like, no. So like all during this time, we're looking for stuff. We end up, excuse me. We end up go baking at Ripa Villa Plantation.

31:36They had a commercial kitchen there. Oh no. Yeah, Sarah, you have paused on us. It's a great pause though. Like the way in which she's frozen is great. It looks like she's showing us how big something is. It's like, I caught a fish. There she is. I caught a fish, it was this big. Hey, she's back. Sarah, we missed a lot of whatever you just said for like 20 seconds or 10 seconds. We stopped here. Okay. So I don't, I do that a lot. I had a commercial baking kitchen at Ripa Villa. Yeah. And then we stopped. So yes. So we baked at Ripa Villa for like 13 months and the house, it was, but we couldn't, we outgrew it in three months because as soon as we got in there, Homestead Manor that used to be was, Andy Marshall owned that.

32:37And that was before they started Scouts Pub. So they lost their baker right before that Mother's Day, 2016. And then I'm like, hey, so can you bake bread for us for Mother's Day? We have all these picnics and stuff. They called us that morning at like six o'clock and they're like, okay, so we need 60 baguettes and however much other bread, can we come pick it up in like two hours? I'm like, no, because I don't have it to, you know, it was like, I can have it for you by noon. And they're like, okay, cool. So we made 60 baguettes. This is the first time I've ever like, my hands had moved that fast making baguettes and all this other stuff. And we did it, they came and they picked it up at noon and they're like, we have no idea how you did that. I'm like, cool, neither do I. So that's just kind of how it went. And then after that, they gave us the Scouts Pub account. They wanted us to create, or they wanted me to create breads for them for the opening of their restaurant. So right when they were open, if there was any sort of bread on the menu, it was ours. So it was crazy.

33:38So we had a couple of employees and then my husband and my daughter would come in and help and do a lot of that stuff. And at some point they donated it to the city, but they didn't tell us. They like, we found out about it, reading it in the newspaper. Like, and I'm like, I had to go back and be like, excuse me, what's going on? They're like, oh yeah, by the way, you're not gonna be a part of us donating it to the city. So get out. And I'm like, no, like what? So had to take everything back home to the home bakery after now I'd had like two, like a double stack commercial oven going from making like two to 300 cookies and one bake to 36 cookies. And I had a farmer's market that started in three days, like the big one. So what just happened there? I don't understand what just happened. So yeah, so we were baking at Ripa Villa. You were baking at Ripa Villa and then you got the Scouts Pub contract, right? Or you're baking all the bread for Scouts Pub.

34:38And then they were donating bread to the city? Like, what do you mean by that? Oh, no, no. No, they donated the property that we were baking at to the city. And then they told us. Oh, okay. And we found out about it in the newspaper. Okay, sorry about that. Yeah. So they donated the bread and then they said you're not part of it. I'm like, what? Oh no. I'm sorry. Yeah, yeah. Yeah, so they donated the property to the city. We found out about it in the paper and then we had to go find a new space but we were still in the process. Remember, we've been there 10 months having outgrown the facility. We can't bake anymore or anything else like that. So then when we moved our operation back to the house again, I had to get rid of all of my commercial clients because I was going back to my house. So I'm like. Why didn't they tell you? It's a very long, dramatic story. I'm like, was it like a, like were they just letting you use the space for free?

35:38And they were just like, hey. Well, okay, but then they just donated out from underneath you. That doesn't make sense. Like that's just, that's rude. Well, they are rude. And that's kind of the thing, which is why that company is no longer managing the property anymore. And they, it's been, you know, once the city took it over, just recently they fired that group of people that was taking care of it. Now Battle of Franklin Trust is running it. It's a lot better. They're a lot less, you know, everything. But yeah, it was this really crazy time where we, like we had a six month contract and we wanted to renew, but with the way that they wanted us to renew was to pay them rent and then pay them a percentage, but a percentage with no cap. So we, at some point, if like the better we did, the more we had to pay them. But at some point now it's going to be more expensive than anything we would have been able to do in the rest of the city of Spring Hills. So we're like, well, we're not signing the contract. So at some point- So this is, you're not talking about Andy Marshall. No, no, no, no. You're talking about the people that took it over after Andy Marshall.

36:40No, this is Ripa Villa. This isn't- Okay, I'm a little different. Yeah, yeah, no, no. I'm sorry, I'm like over here, I'm like where, whoa. Just look at that node. Well, and Brandon like deals with contracts. So the no cap part, I can hear his brain like being like, never, never. Yeah, no, it was atrocious. So it was just like, okay, cool. So we're going to leave. All I need is four walls and an oven and I can make stuff happen. So we went back to the house. I think that was another, during the farmer's market season, there was a lot of baking 36-hour stretches to try to make enough to be able to serve the community that we'd had. And at some point we finally got into a commercial space, 925 square feet, like the smallest little, it used to be the old phone company for the city of Spring Hill that had been converted into a commercial kitchen. That was the spot. I didn't realize that every single Saturday there was going to be a line around the building for cinnamon rolls. So we had a staff of like 13.

37:40We were getting there earlier and earlier in the morning. We would sell out of our first round of cinnamon rolls by like maybe 10. And then we made another like 15 to 20 dozen. And then we were sold out of those by 11 and we didn't close till two. So it was- Can I call time out for one second? Yeah, yeah. What does your husband do for a living? He's in marketing. So- He can help there, but what are, like you've moved to Nashville and now you, hey, I like to bake, this is fun. And it brings me, I like talking about baking with people. And then you start, this thing is blown up. Now all of your time, are you, do you have children? I have one 16 year old. She started with me when she was eight or nine. So she actually was on staff with us through all of this. Okay, but like, are you guys able to like even spend time together? I mean, are you able to like do things? Are you just like bake? It sounds like you are completely consumed by baking all the time and this thing is just blown up.

38:41Like is that, how is your normal life during all of this? Non-existence is probably the best way I can describe it. But yeah, no, my husband graduated from high school when he was 16, started his first business when he was 17. He was traveling internationally, playing with Tommy Walker cause he's a musician. He's played at like all of the churches in Southern California. And so he was really good at running the business side of stuff. And so he was more business so I could be more baker artist kind of person. Okay. So he played that enormous role in the business. He does it for a lot of other businesses locally now too. But yeah, I mean, I would, we would wake up two and three o'clock in the morning. I wouldn't get off until well after close cause there's everything else that's gotta happen with like ingredients coming in and you know, just everything. So yeah, so it was, it was 18 hour days easily and would go home, forge in the fridge for my only meal of the day and then pass out for four hours, four or five hours and then get up and start all over again.

39:44So at some point I found it collapsed. So that's what- Do you feel like that's just the life of an entrepreneur or do you have like, if you were to go back, knowing what you know now, we've gone through a pandemic and all of the insanity that you've been dealing with, going back to that time right now, if I was out there and I was somebody who was kind of just starting out, there's a lot of restaurants doing pop-ups now, a lot of people, there's a lot of people that throughout the pandemic have identified this entrepreneur and that wanna be chefs. What advice would you give to people right now who are kind of back where you were? Well, a handful of things. One, like one of the things that we started from the very beginning was that we always took off the week between Christmas and New Year's. And I'm not saying that everyone needs to do that because that's still, like a lot of people are still kind of in their spendy mode kind of during that week. And then the beginning of January, like everyone's out of money and on a diet. So as far as that, it's like, you can pretty much, it's true, cause they like don't think for the first- Carbs go away in January.

40:47Right, everyone now feels guilty about all of this, about the eating season that they just had. But that's what we call it, eating season. I was born- I like to do my biggest loser challenges in November, December. Yeah, so it's just like, so I guess part of it is it's okay to say no, but then also if you decide that you wanna take off, like if your business is just closed for how like these many days or whatever, it's totally fine for you to just say, this is our week that we go and or that we work on the business or we have time off or whatever it is. So the whole idea of like you train your customers for whatever your schedule is, and they will support the thing that you're doing, the way that you need to do it. So if you need more sleep or you need to have more of this or that, you can shorten your hours. Those hours will be busier, but you'll still have enough time to sleep, go to the doctor, eat occasionally, take care of yourself, remember to shower, like all of the basic needs that if you just say yes to everything, the more that you say yes to other people, the more you're taking away from yourself and your own personal needs and your own self care and all that kind of stuff.

42:00So as someone who took it to the extreme the other way, where it was like, I was only eating whatever I could find in the fridge, not even cooked at some point. It was like, that's such an unhealthy place to be that if you can set yourself up early, then you likely won't run into that and then hire as needed so that you can maintain that. Because if you're completely burnt out, you have nothing left to give your customers, you don't have anything left to give your staff. So at that point, you can't lead. So you're shooting yourself in the foot, but you're also shooting them in the foot in that way too. You know, I think that's really, really good advice. And I will tell you that's good advice for people out there in that scenario I just described. I'm also looking in the mirror right now, listening to that going, damn, I need to do that myself. Like that's not only good advice for people that are starting out, that's good advice for people who are in the middle of it. Oh yeah. That it's like, hey, you need to take a minute. Like you need to boundary, set some boundaries and it's okay to set boundaries.

43:06Nobody's gonna like boycott you if you take some time for yourself. It's okay. Right. Yeah, well, and I think that's the thing too is it's like when we would get to that point or I would get to that point, I would get on like Facebook or like Facebook live or excuse me, Instagram or something, make a video and say, hey guys, guess what? I'm burnt out. We're taking a week off because I can't even feel my face right now, I'm so tired. And they're like, oh my God, yes, definitely go. Like take some time off, all the other kinds of stuff. Your staff probably needs a break too. So- But can you get me a dozen rolls before noon tomorrow? Right. Yeah, no, that would happen all the time. Like wait, but I need this. And it's kind of like, but you can't have that because I need to like not die today, please, thank you. So it's like you have to get used to saying no to people but then also giving them like the transparent reason why. I think at that point, most people, it seems like you're always gonna have the Karens that get upset with you about stuff or whatever but most people will understand you're a person.

44:12You need time off, you need a break, you need to sleep, you need to take care of yourself. And if you have to be close for a week and even if they have people coming in town specifically to come see you or whatever, like I'm sorry but I need this for me. Like I need, like I'm a person too and I'm not gonna be afraid of what customers are going to think if I decide that I need time off. Like I'm not a robot, they can't expect that from me. So it's almost like if you're upfront about your own humanity and you're upfront about your vulnerabilities and everything else like that, that people are so much more willing to forgive than we believe they are. It's like almost people are afraid of what they're gonna say but you can't be because you have to take care of you. Jen, what do you have that? I totally agree with that. I also think that like, you know, Brandon and I both work in the restaurant industry and my husband and I own a restaurant and I read reviews for a living and I feel like humanity leaves when reviews come in sometimes.

45:13And I mean, you're a baker, right? Like you want every bread to taste the same of the same type, right? You want every sourdough to taste the same but you're a human and there's human elements in that and so it's not going to. And so I just got in an argument with somebody on Facebook as the business we own and this woman was like, she left a review four times on four different pictures over the course of the last year and was like, hope you're better now. You were terrible this one time. You were terrible this one time. You were terrible this one time. Band hammer, just get rid of them, man. Like I thought so. Eventually I was like, hey, I'm so sorry. You know, we try our best to be great every day. Unfortunately, we can't. We try, we're always gonna fail. We are humans. And that was not an acceptable answer to her. And so eventually I was like, hey, you know, I've apologized, we have offered to make it right. This is the best we can do. If we lose your business, we hope wherever you go next is great. And then it became a whole thing. She was like, well, I have cancer.

46:14And I'm like, okay, sir, you are also a human. You know, so I think that like Brandon and I talk about this a lot too. Like I have a lot going on in my life and so does he and grace for each other and for like those human elements and for our staff and for each other and our partners and stuff. Like self-grace and grace for others is just so vital. And I feel like people forget that. And it's so good to live in a place of like, I need grace for me so I can give grace to you. Yeah, yeah. I think also one of the things I love is just if you daily find gratitude in things just in your normal life, then everything doesn't seem so big and scary. Like if you can just find gratitude, I took this screenshot. I'm gonna read this. I thought it was really good. I don't know if it's even relevant. This is just kind of fun life stuff that I thought was really interesting. Oh, it says, grateful for early wakeups.

47:19Hey, I have children that I get to love. The house to clean. Well, I have a safe place to live. Laundry, I have clothes to wear. Dishes to wash. I had food to eat. Crumbs under the table. Family meals. We got to have family meals. Grocery shopping. I get to provide for the family. Toilets to clean. We have indoor plumbing. Lots of noise. I have people in my life. Endless questions about homework. My kids' brains are growing. Sore and tired in bed. Hey, I'm still alive. And I felt like all of those little things are just things that every day we can be like, but finding gratitude in almost anything is there. And when you can do that, you don't leave reviews like that and you can just kind of let people, you know what, it's okay. I don't know how we got on this topic, but I love it. Well, just the idea of making everyone happy. You can't do it. I mean, it's just not possible. It's a great goal. It is like an incredible goal, but you have to take care of yourself.

48:20And so I'm glad that you found space to do that. That's really important. Yeah, for sure. And I mean, yeah, it's almost like you have to think about like whoever the person is. We had this one, shortly before we closed, she came in and she was like, you ever meet those people that are like hell bent on having a bad day, like the second they walk in and you're like, there's literally nothing that I'm gonna be able to do to make this person happy or whatever. And yeah, she did. She almost made my front of house manager cry. She had coke and then she left a terrible review that said that she, that it was too sweet and they gave her a headache. And I'm like, I feel like those were life choices that ended in the constant. Andrew, the thing that we always do is I've. Oh no.

49:20Yeah, Sarah, we're losing you again. Are we back? Hmm, kind of for a second there. The robots, the robots are active right now. They're actively against whatever you just said. Oh yeah. Okay, thanks for your back. So she, I feel like I'm back on this. I don't know if I'm back yet on that side or not. They've been doing internet work on our neighborhood. Oh, that's the, I love it when they do that. That happened to me last week and the week before. I'm in the middle of a show and I'm like. It didn't, you couldn't hear anything. It was horrible. Yeah. Okay, let's give it a shot. Let's jump back in right now. Okay, so she ignored my like, I'm so sorry that you had a terrible experience. We were willing to like, replace it for free or whatever.

50:20And she started going on every other person's good review and saying, no, it's not. No, it's not. And it was like, I started getting messages from those people saying, what is this? Who is this person and why is she so mad? And I'm like, I don't know. She fell for sugar high and then a headache. So it's at some point, like there are people that are like malicious on purpose and you can do it with Facebook. I know you can't do it with like Yelp or anything else like that. But it's like, look, you can like, I'm very, I don't want to hit like ban on people. But if you're gonna just be like that and just be pissed, even though I said, I'm willing to fix it for you. Like you can just be like, sorry, you can't be a part of the community anymore because you're choosing to be terrible. So, you know, what can you do? Well, and like just why be an asshole? Like there's so many other things to be. I don't understand the choice to be an asshole. Like. You know what? I think that it's interesting because we've come to a time where I think a lot of people throughout the pandemic, they're so divisive. So many things that were divisive throughout this time.

51:22But I think people drew a line in the sand and they were like, you know what? We have enough stuff that we have to deal with that I'm gonna stop putting up with people that are just toxic. Like those people just, I don't need you. Like, and I don't care. I'm not, I'm unafraid anymore. There was a thing that customer was always right, but it's like, no, I don't care if you ever come back. And I think people appreciate that out of independently owned and operated businesses. When people stand up for their businesses, stand for themselves and go, no, I don't need your business that bad. Other people like on the sidelines going, yes, that's what I'm talking about. And I think that's a good thing. So can I ask an unrelated question to baking and reviews and all of that? You said you're a bookworm and so am I. And you're an author and I plan to be at some point. So what are some books you love? What are some authors you love? Like I just personally wanna know because this whole time I love Anne of Green Gables.

52:23I read it every year. I read it every October. It is one of my very favorite books. And she talks a lot about kindred spirits in that book. And I'm like, oh, I'm getting that like feeling here today. And so I was just wondering some of your favorites. We, I used to watch it with my grandma every single time because they'd go and spend like two weeks in the summer with her. So I admittedly haven't read it, but I watched the old, old one way back when I was a kid I can't remember what the actress's name was, but I love that one. I've never seen it. I've never seen it. I've only read it, but I desperately, I love it so desperately. The place it takes place is Avonlea. And I pitched very hard for our daughter to be named Avonlea. And my husband was like, what the hell is an Avonlea? Like, no. But I think it's anybody who grew up around the time that we did or like loves that book. They'd be like, oh, she loves Anne of Green Gables. Like that's awesome. Yeah, my husband said like, absolutely not. There's no reference to it in our daughter's name. I pitched it. I would have been all, if it was me, Jen, I'd have been like, do it.

53:28Well, you're like a year and a half too late for it to be yours. Sorry, I was gonna talk to Kenji and like been like, hey dude, Avonlea's great. You should go there. He's gonna be, he won't even remember. I'll be like, probably some weird, I pitched a lot of weird names and we didn't, I did not win a lot of those names. But anyway, what are some books you like? I dreamt my daughter's name. Oh, let's see, I read a lot of, I actually collect old cookbooks. I know that's very still like on topic, but I love reading like 1800s cookbooks where it says moderate oven. We're gonna take a quick break to hear a word from our sponsors. When talking about what chefs want, really the question is, how do they do it? No fees, no fuel charges, no surcharges, never. This allows you to order as much or as little as you need as often as you need. Seven day delivery, access products every day, trimming your waste, increasing your valuable shelf life and allowing you fresher product.

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56:44Sitex is a third generation family owned and operated linen, mats and uniform company. They really are the good guys in linen business. They're transparent with their pricing, they have incredible quality and their service is second to none. Check them out at Sitex-corp.com or give Ross Chandler a call at 270-823-2468. Yeah, a lot of them say oven or like moderate oven or they don't give like the pan size or whatever the thing is, they're just like baking at this and you're like, okay, I guess this goes in cake pans or you just kind of figure it out. Like what would that mean? Or back when they cooked with wood or they did all of their cooking over wood versus actually set a thermostat to 350. You know, you had to say moderate and I've heard it recently explained that if you could hold your hand in the oven for however many seconds, that's how hot it needed to be. So I don't know, that's a whole other science that I totally don't get, but you know, I think it's cool anyway.

57:53A lot of the cookbooks like Cooky and a lot of the old cookbooks like 20s and earlier or I guess 30s and earlier, they spelled cookie with a Y instead of a I-E and they wouldn't call them like walnuts. They would be like walnuts, nut meats or something like that or like oleo, which I think is margarine. So you have all of these different terminology and that kind of stuff. You have to actually like research and Google it to try to figure out what it is. So I just think it's not that bad. Yeah, yeah, I like the mystery of it a lot. Okay, so I wanna pivot just a little bit and ask you, so your book is called Baking with the Bread Lady. 100 delicious recipes you can make at home. Is that it right, 100 delicious recipes? And if you're watching this on the YouTube, you can see that that's what it says along the ticker there.

58:54So these are 100 original recipes. Did you make all these recipes from your grandmother? Are these just like recipes that you really like, that you twitched one ingredient? Or how do you come up with a process for creating these recipes? Yes, some of them are families for sure. I think the oldest recipe that's in the book is from the 1850s. So that is my great grandmother's grandmother's recipe. So that one, I kinda had to change a handful of things because that would have been made in an oven, a wood fire oven. But a lot of the other recipes are ones that I've worked on where I either found a recipe that I liked and it was okay and I'm like, let's make this better. So then you start messing with things and at some point it no longer resembles the recipe that it started out as, now it's your own because you're like, okay, we need at least double the salt on this and definitely double the vanilla.

59:57And then I don't really like this flour to flour ratio so let's kinda mess around with that. So it's basically mad science with food until you come up with what you think is the best and then you just guinea pig it to your customers until they like it and then you're like, cool, awesome, great, now we can put this on the menu. So one of the things about your book is all the reviews said it's so easy to follow along and to me, so many things are easy, like growing grass and yard work and fixing stuff is easy to me but baking is a foreign language. I don't understand how baking works. Could somebody like me buy your book and what am I gonna make that I'm gonna impress my wife with? She comes back and I'm like, I made cinnamon rolls. Am I gonna be able to make like Tuscan flatbread? Like what is going on here? What can a novice like me pick up from your book? Well, there's a good range of different recipes and there are some for intermediate and then a lot for beginners as well.

01:01:04If she loves brownies, the brownie recipe in here is basically baked fudge with hazelnuts in it. They're addictive, they're super duper addictive. And then also there's other recipes in here that are like the gluten-free ones that are like frittatas which is basically like a quiche with no crust. So for a recipe like that, you don't have to master a crust but there is one in here if you wanted to turn a frittata into a quiche. And even that pie recipe is my great grandmother's pie recipe. I am terrible at pie crust. Like I cannot just pick up any recipe and make a good pie but for some reason hers comes out perfect for me every single time. So if I can be a dense at this, like just pie crust in general and I can pick up this one, like other people should probably be able to pick it up too. So, you know. What do you think the best for novices, right? So people out there that don't know how to bake that are scared of baking, what are some general tips and tricks that you as the bread lady could share with us?

01:02:14There's a handful of things, a lot of not over mixing of things. I've even found with making of the breads and stuff like that, we made so many loaves of bread and things you don't need to knead the bread for the eight to 10 minutes. A lot of recipes will tell you that that's like a prerequisite that you're gonna get an arm workout for this. I've actually found that once you mix all of the ingredients together, especially if you're doing it on a mixer, once everything pulls away from the side of the bowl to begin with, just leave it for 10 or 15 minutes, come back, you know, just have it go for two more minutes and you're done. You don't have to knead it anymore for the rest of the process. So that's a beginner when a lot of people are terrified of like making breads because of that and because of yeast, there are a lot of cake bakers that don't do yeast. They only do cake. So I know that's definitely, that's one, there are a couple of troubleshooting things in here specifically, but as far as a beginner, I'd probably stick with like your cookies and your cakes. Start with your soda leaven based things before, and then kind of work your way up, I think, to more of your yeast spreads and figuring out the gluten thing and stuff like that.

01:03:24Okay, so start with baking cookies and cakes. Yes, yeah. It takes a lot less time to make cookies than it does a loaf of bread. Like a loaf of bread is usually somewhere between two and four hours. So if you get to the end of the four hour mark and you just basically have a really sad brick, you're gonna be really sad that you spent all of those hours doing that. But if you have a cookie and the cookies kind of, they do that pancake thing on the tray, you can still eat them and they're fine, right? So I think that's the thing that if you're brand new to baking that starting with something that's simpler and shorter that has a better, or I guess a more quick reward time that you're more apt to like stick with whatever that thing is. So, but as far as, oh yeah, with cookies, have you ever made cookies in like a stand mixer and like the last two or three cookies that you scoop out onto the tray and you bake, those are the ones that turn into a pancake? No. No. No?

01:04:26No, I buy the cookies that are in like a little sheet at the store. Oh, okay. And they're like pre, they're like scored and you just break off a little chunk and you put those on it. Oh, there we go. That's my level of cook. I can do those. Those are good. I like that. But so if you're making, if you're making cookies from scratch, a lot of times what happens is you get a weird little butter sugar pocket around the base. Like if you've ever seen, there's always that like hump inside the mixer. So you get like this butter sugar kind of packed down in there. So the way that you stop your pancake cookies happening right at the very end is you scrape all the way to the bottom after every step. So you put, you mix your sugar and your butter together. You scrape all the way to the bottom before you add your eggs and vanilla in. And then after- When you say pancakes. You know, when they get flat. They're really- I thought cookies were flat though. No, these are like, yeah. Like the cooking or the baking fails where they start out as cookies and then it's one giant just like flat cookie over the whole thing.

01:05:29Okay. So usually that means that your dry ratio to your butter, sugar and egg ratio, your wet ratio is off. But in the chance that just the last couple have turned out, they just get too big. Then usually what happens is the flour didn't make it to mix all the way to the bottom of the bowl. So by mixing everything multiple times or pulling up all the ingredients from the bottom, it's fully mixing everything together. So. My question's so unrelated. I just, okay, do you watch Great British Bake Off? Yes. Okay. So when I watch that, I'm a total asshole. And I'm like, that piece of shit, Brad, like I don't know anything about baking. I can't cook, but I'm always judging them. And it's somebody that should not be, but that's what that show is for, right? Like I just, anyway, are you like that? Or are you like kind because you know what goes into it? I feel like there's a couple, yes or no on both of that. Cause it depends on what it is or this one. I don't know.

01:06:29Part of it, I guess, is it's like, I think because I've been under the stress of having to accomplish things quickly or by a deadline, which was 7.30 when we were open. I guess more than anything, like when they had to do the ice cream cakes and it's like the middle of summer or something for them. And I'm like, why didn't you give them this? You want all of them to fail. Is this just for good TV? Like you guys are jerks. But they have bread wheat specifically, right? And it's like such a big deal on there. And I'm like, again, like I can't, I spent eight hours trying to make steamed buns. My husband is Japanese. During quarantine, I tried to make like steamed buns. It took eight hours. They were awful. He took pictures, sent them to my mother-in-law. It was a whole thing. So I understand the bread fail. And yet on TV, I still have no grace. I'm like, well, you signed up for this. So anyway, what are you like during bread wheat? Some of it's like, oh, it's overproofed to whatever. I'm like, yeah, because you put it in the oven and the oven was too hot. So it's kind of like- You can see the mistakes and you're like, this is how you do it.

01:07:31Yeah. I was like, this is them. So I immediately go to like analyze, like this is how they messed up or, and so I try to go, they're like, oh, I've never done bread before. I'm very new at bread. I'm like, okay, cool. So they don't understand the personality of yeast. They don't really understand the gluten development part of whatever this thing is. But then there's other stuff that's really easy that you go, how could you possibly have messed that up? Or that ingredient actually made your thing mess up or something like that. Like people who make orange bread and then it overproofs really easily. It's because acid makes yeast. It's like handing yeast a red bull. And so it's like, we're gonna be bread right now. And so it's like, you actually have to get your bread in sooner because the yeast just is going, we're gonna make giant, just giant bubbles in this bread right now. But if you didn't know that about it and you're in a competition or what have you, yeah, of course you're gonna mess up because you didn't know that your yeast is in overdrive because of the acid that's in there.

01:08:32Have you ever been on one of those competitions? I haven't. You want to? I don't think I'm done with breast baking. I don't know. I've actually thought about doing that for our community and doing like a master chef baking thing or whatever and then getting some of my friends and then we're the judges on the show or whatever. Love that. Just local, can we cover it? Yeah, can we host it? That'd be so fun. That would be awesome. We'll do it live, we'll like film it and we'll put it on Nashville Western Radio to be a fun Nashville Western Radio production. Yeah. We don't have to like take any credit for it. We'll just put it out there for the world to see. Yeah. Yeah, there we go. I mean, I think it would be super duper fun. It just, you know, it's, I guess it's one of those things, like the contest, I don't know if I, I'm sure it would probably do okay. I don't think I would get eliminated first round or I guess that's what everyone thinks. But I think it would be fun to do that for the community and then have like the prize be some crazy thing or whatever. So you get like the other baker, you get like, you know, sharpies, like their master baker and you get frothy monkey has a bakery, get their bakery and you would get like the big bakeries in town and we do it for like hands-on Nashville or something.

01:09:43It'd be fun for the community. There we go. You could all play for your charity. Well, now I can, now I can write that down. That would be awesome. See, that's another thing you can't say no to. That's another thing we gotta do. Well, that's my problem. I have all the ideas, I don't have the time. That's where I come in though, so we'll make it happen. I can just give me your email, I'll make it happen. Yeah, we have a Christmas parade every year. My thought was just to do something in tandem with that, like do a bake-off of sorts or something. Yeah. I'm hoping that they, like I would love to be a judge or something like that. Or, I mean, shoot, not grand marshal. We never had time to do it, but I always wanted to make a float kind of going back to all of my other like set design background. Me like, I would like to make a flatbed trailer, look like a giant pan of cinnamon rolls and then basically dress up as like the cinnamon roll fairy, like sugar plum fairy or whatever and just have like a smoke machine and like have like everything glittered and just have it look like they're all steaming and like figure out how to like pump out the smell of cinnamon rolls as we're like driving down.

01:10:54And if you had like gooey cinnamon rolls that you threw into the crowd and people caught them and they were like, what the hell is this? And just people were just like just messy, just throwing cinnamon rolls at people. That's where I get weird, sorry, I'm sorry. No, I love, I mean, I was thinking maybe like coupons or something like that, but yeah. Actual cinnamon rolls hit people in the face, like, ah. You know, you lived in Spring Hill, you know there would be like all kinds of complaints and stuff like that on the iHeart page. Spring Hill is an awesome community. They have a group called iHeart Spring Hill. Are you part of that? Yes, mostly for- Watching the crazy people? Yes, you need a lot of popcorn to get on there. I think it's been a lot better now, but yeah, I mean, if you wanna go in and just listen to people complain about just really mundane stuff, it's a great place to go. Just be like, oh, okay. That's where you find your gratitude. Right, exactly.

01:11:56You could do it at the Dickens Festival in Franklin here. Oh, that would be fun. Yeah, there you go. Well, all right, well, Sarah the Bread Lady Gonzalez, thank you for letting us just call you that. Does it get old? Yeah. Are you like, my name is Sarah. Actually, no. You prefer the Bread Lady. You're not the Bread Woman. I like Bread Lady. Bread Lady's good. It's funny, because I actually answered that more than I answered to Sarah, because if you were born in the early 80s, your name was Sarah, Jessica, or Jennifer. My wife is Jennifer. Yeah, I was born in the 90s, but my name is obviously Jennifer too, and it's everywhere. I know, so it's like, do you ever go to the grocery store and you look around and somebody says Jennifer, and you're like, oh, it's definitely not me. At this point, I just assume they're not talking to me, and so somebody can be like, hey, bread, and I know it's me. So I just, I prefer, at this point, I just prefer bread. Hey, bread. And they're like, I know it's me, because nobody else has called that, so it's fun.

01:12:59Hey, Bread Lady. Well, thank you so much. Thank you so much for spending this time today. Like, I have enjoyed hearing your story and just kind of talking, and this has been a lot of fun. Thank you so much for joining us. Yeah, thank you so much for having me on. This was a blast. I liked talking to you guys too. I'm gonna surprise you now, because this is the time in which I throw people off, and I throw, this is the curve ball, because we are gonna land the plane, and I always give my guests the last word. So, what I'm gonna do is, I am gonna put you directly on the spot, and I'm gonna let you take us out. So whatever you wanna say, as long as you wanna say it, I'm gonna big screen you, and you get to Jerry's final thought style, whatever you wanna say to the people out there, go. Oh my gosh. Well, I mean, thank you so much for hanging out with us today, and if you really love Tasty Delicious Cards, you should definitely go and get the book, and thank you so much to the hosts and everyone for listening and watching to all this craziness today.

01:14:12So, thanks guys. All right, well, that was great. Thank you so much. Before you go, can you tell us where everyone can find you? I wanna, they can find your Instagram or your Facebook or whatever anyone can find with you. It is Breadladieskitchen on everything. So breadladieskitchen.com is a website. You can find all of the places to purchase the books there. On Instagram, it's at Breadladieskitchen, no underlines or anything like that, and same on Facebook. And I just started on TikTok as well. So at Breadladieskitchen, you can find me on there too. A lot of cat videos for now, but we're getting more back to the baking stuff. We love that. We love TikTok. Thank you so much, The Breadlady, for joining us. This was so much fun. Have a wonderful week. Thank you. Thanks, you too. All right, thanks for listening to this episode with Sarah, The Breadlady Gonzalez. Hope that you enjoyed it. If you liked it, share it, click the subscribe button. However you are consuming this podcast, and we hope that you are being safe out there.

01:15:13Wear a mask, go get vaccinated. Love you guys, bye.