Breezy bake: Siouxland business owner finds fulfillment from bread-making venture

The director of operations at Modern Kitchen Design kept busy enough with her 9-to-5 that the notion of picking up a time-intensive hobby turned side business didn't seem real.

"I would have said, 'Not on your life, I'm busy enough as it is,'" Struthers-Drake remarked. 

But for the past year now, she's been baking loaf after loaf of bread and marketing it on Facebook on her "Breezy's Bread Basket" page, which touts homemade organic sourdough. The options for a recent week included traditional sourdough as well as roasted garlic, cranberry walnut, apple streusel and triple chocolate espresso.

"I change it weekly. I always have a traditional loaf because that’s just standard, straight-up sourdough. But I’ll change them up. Especially seasonally," she said. "Right now, with the apple and the pumpkin, I’ll keep those. And as we head into the colder months, get a little bit heavier inclusions. And then for St. Patty’s Day I did like a Guinness loaf. You do a rye loaf. Things like that to just kind of follow along with the seasons." 

The bread gig partly grew out of a certain satisfaction she got in cooking for her family. Her grandmother was a baker. "She would always have treats for us and if she didn’t she would apologize profusely," Struthers-Drake recalled.

At the beginning of her journey, Struthers-Drake said she had all sorts of questions about the process and there was much she didn't understand. 

"I have got it down now that I could do it in my sleep," she said proudly. 

We chatted with Struthers-Drake about her new venture, the difficulties and joys of it and some of her memorable offerings. Comments have been edited for style and clarity.

How sharp was the learning curve for you when you first got started baking bread a year ago?

"So your starter is literally floured water but it becomes alive and it has to bubble and you have to feed it and you have to feed it the proper ratios and it has to be the proper temperature. And then there's a whole learning curve about actually making a loaf of bread. What type of flour to use, what's your ratio, what's your hydration level? There's a whole baker’s math out there so that you can figure out what your percentage is. And everybody, every baker, is going to be different. And then how long you proof it, how you shape the loaf. There's so many different little things. There are Facebook pages upon Facebook pages and TikToks and everything. It's like a complete thing, absolutely went down the rabbit hole."

It's a very precise practice.

"It’s precision which I didn't think I would like because I love to cook and I never follow a recipe. I always say that you season until your ancestors tell you stop. And so with baking, it's much more of a precise thing, but I love it. It's like a science project, and it's ever changing, because you can change up your ratios, and add maybe rye flour, or feed it a little honey, and you can get a different outcome and a little bit of a different taste."

Where did you get your starter?

"I ordered it off Etsy. I ordered it off a gal who has been baking sourdough for a long, long time, and I got it in dehydrated form, and I brought it back to life. And it was a daunting task. At the beginning, I got it and I did not revive it for many, many weeks. And then look, look at what it's grown into. But I've also made my own starter. It's very interesting because mine was, like 200 years old but you're feeding it all the time, so it's constantly turning over. But it's that little bit of bacteria that stays, that grows and feeds."

Do you have any loaves you were especially fond of?

"Every time I bake a loaf, I just love the smell of it. I don’t like one over the other. It’s kind of like: Are you sweet or savory? If I make like a roasted garlic loaf, when that comes out of the oven, oh my goodness, it just smells intoxicating. The everything Asiago smells absolutely amazing. It really kind of changes and I don’t make a loaf that I wouldn’t truly love myself. We do little taste tests and stuff. I'll bring stuff down here and have a few people pop in … and I'll have them taste them and see where we end up for what the overall consensus is on which one they like in terms of flavors and flavor profiles."

What's your setup at home?

"I just have a standard home range and they are all made in a Dutch oven. Max I do is six loaves at a time in the Dutch ovens. I’m very fortunate that I have an oven I can do that in. Eventually, will I get a bread oven? Maybe. We’ll see how that goes. It’s also still a balancing act and I don’t want it to not be a passion project and it to become a must."