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The past is always present at a growing number of Black-owned bakeries serving up historic recipes and beloved traditions reshaped to resonate with modern diners.
Here are four outstanding bakeshops with deep roots on display.
Back in the Day Bakery
Savannah, Georgia
While researching her family roots, Cheryl Day was drawn to Savannah, where her grandfather worked on the Southern Railway. She fell in love with the city, made it her home and, in 2002, opened Back in the Day Bakery with her husband, Griffith Day.
Long-loved specialties include flaky buttermilk biscuits, generously sized chocolate chip cookies, lick-the-plate chocolate layer cake and a bevy of cupcakes. But the award-winning cookbook author and media personality is always pushing herself to try new things. “I’m a very creative person, so I have to evolve,” she says. “My husband feels the same way. We don’t like to rest on our laurels.”
During the pandemic, the pair created Janie Q, a line of jams, jellies and mixes named after Day’s grandmother. Each incorporates a botanical element to create flavors such as peach lavender, blackberry lemon verbena and strawberry chamomile. The couple also transformed the bakery’s dining area into a studio where Day teaches baking classes, while young culinary talents use it as an incubator space.
Creating opportunities is part of Day’s larger mission. In 2020, she co-founded Southern Restaurants for Racial Justice, which provides grants to Black-owned restaurants and offers mentorship programs.
Souk
Washington, D.C.
Winnette McIntosh Ambrose went to Massachusetts Institute of Technology, trained as a chemical engineer and pursued a successful career in medical device design before she turned her talents to engineering award-winning pastries. Now she owns two of D.C.’s finest patisseries located in the historic Capitol Hill neighborhood.
The Sweet Lobby specializes in dainty macarons and Instagram-ready cupcakes, while Souk, which doubles as a spice shop, offers classic French pastries in a globe-spanning array of flavors. Think cardamom-accented kouign ammans, rum and vanilla canelés, and croissants plumped with salmon and nori.
But the most personal pastry in the case is cassava pone, a riff on a recipe her grandmother made when McIntosh Ambrose was growing up in Trinidad and Tobago. At its core, it’s simple: tender cake made with finely ground cassava root and coconut, but she elevates it with a rum-amped ginger glaze and a candied beet chip perched on top.
“It’s very emotional for me,” she says. “It tells my story.”
Viola’s Heritage Breads
New Orleans, Louisiana
It began with a quest to find better bread for PB&Js. All the options Carla Briggs could find were either cheap and highly processed or super-expensive artisan
boules; there wasn’t an affordable middle ground.
Right before the pandemic, Briggs – a baker with a concurrent career as a culinary workforce training manager focused on helping people of color navigate the food industry – created a loaf with roasted Louisiana sweet potatoes and rosemary to add depth of flavor. As the world locked down, her sales picked up, and the project became Viola’s Heritage Breads.
Her offerings now include Louisiana seafood boil spiced potato bread — which works well for fish sandwiches and burgers — colorful king cakes, brown butter chocolate chip cookies and biscotti.
Briggs sees her work as a baker and educator as part of a larger mission. “I want to help bring awareness to Black bakers and brown bakers who don’t receive the recognition they deserve or the resources necessary to navigate this industry and stay successful,” she says.
27th Street Bakery
Los Angeles
There’s a lot of family history tucked into this tradition-minded Los Angeles bakery founded over half a century ago. The walls are decorated with pictures from over the years, and there’s a huge black oven and cash registers on display from the business’ earliest days.
Third-generation owner Jeanette Bolden, who found fame earlier in life as a gold medal Olympic sprinter and track and field coach, oversees classic desserts made with recipes passed down from her grandfather, a transplant from Shreveport, Louisiana. To this day, the biggest sellers are two Southern classics he brought with him: sweet potato pie and pecan pie, although customers also line up for lemon meringue pies, pound cakes and creamy sweet potato cheesecakes cradled in graham cracker crusts.
Bolden owns the business with her husband and sister; they’re teaching younger family members the tricks of the trade.
“It’s an unwritten rule that we must keep this legacy going,” she says. “We want to see this bakery be here for generation after generation.”
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USA TODAY
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