I started a bakery in Santa Fe
Ushering in my flour-powered era at Atomic Bakehouse.
At 10am on Saturday, March 21, I opened the delivery door at the back of The Kitchen Table Santa Fe and propped up a painstakingly-designed sandwich board, marking this as the first pick-up location of my pop-up bakery, Atomic Bakehouse.
Over the next two hours, I’d greet my first thirty customers with the sampler boxes of Danish-inspired breakfast treats they’d preordered, handing them over through open driver’s seat windows in a setup I’d eventually start calling my “pastry drive-through.”
That crisp spring morning found me equally terrified and exhilarated as I stood at the precipice of both an ending (of months of careful logistical planning for my soft opening) and a new beginning (of a path of professional self-determination).
It’s been—eek!—almost a year since I last wrote to you. (What can I say? Time flies!) Since that sweltering Southwestern summer’s day, so much has happened.
Last fall, I completed a two-month internship at Mamiche in Paris’s 10th arrondissement. I was lucky enough to work alongside the coolest, kindest, most welcoming people you could possibly imagine.
I spent November in Denmark as part of a pastry self-study course (aka eating my way through Copenhagen’s bakeries), with a ridiculously long single-spaced notes doc to prove it.
And when all of that was complete, I returned to New Mexico to plan and launch my very own pop-up bakery.
It’s involved lots of deliberate, painstaking effort, but over the course of my first ten Saturday pastry drops, I’ve been rewarded with praise from a growing band of repeat customers—and a recent feature in The Santa Fe Reporter.
On the road from financial planner to bakerpreneur, there have been more than a few twists and turns to navigate. (That’s putting it mildly.)
Reader: you’ve stuck with me through them all, and I couldn’t be more grateful! Now that I’m embarking on the adventure that is entrepreneurship, I’d like to bring you along for the ride.
I’ll be honest: the to-do list of a small business owner is daunting, so I can’t yet tell you how often I’ll be writing to you, or give you an exact sense of what to expect. (And I apologize in advance for my inevitably slow replies to your comments and questions.)
But I’d like to get started anyway, however imperfectly, because there are so many fascinating things to dish about: finding a commercial kitchen, getting permitted, identifying and procuring the right equipment, developing and testing new recipes, finding suppliers for each ingredient, branding, marketing, setting up the right sales portals, accounting, growing the business…you know, to name just a few of my new favorite topics of conversation.
This newsletter has already seen three distinct iterations.
First, there was my recovery from the acute grief of losing my mom.
Second was my professional transition away from financial planning.
And third was my professional transition toward baking—which includes the entirety of 2025, which I’ve cheekily deemed my “adult study abroad experience.”
At the start of each phase, I gave this newsletter a new name. It’s always felt like the most appropriate way to honor the latest era—and this time is no different!
Breakfast Club was the perfect title for this newsletter during my time learning from lots of other experienced bakers: my friends at Midsommar Bakery (who first showed me the ropes when I volunteered for them in Tacoma), my chefs and fellow baking school students at Ferrandi, and my colleagues at both Mille and Mamiche once I became a full-time working baker.
Now that I’m flying solo as a bakery entrepreneur and getting back into endurance training in my spare time, I’d like to welcome you to the newest iteration of this newsletter: Flour Powered.
As before, this newsletter will exist at the intersection of pastries and personal growth, my two favorite subjects. But now, you can expect the “personal growth” side of things to include both my return to running, as well as behind-the-scenes peeks into my new business.
So! Nothing is different…and everything is different. And in times of transition, it’s always fun to put on a sparkly new outfit to celebrate the change.
Until next time, please check out my recently-unlocked letters about life in Paris!
I published this series for my fabulous paid subscribers last year—and because paid subscriptions will remain paused indefinitely, I want to give everyone else access to these “adult study abroad” stories, too.
I appreciate you. I missed chatting with you. I’ll see you here again soon!
Warmly,
Maddie
Flour Powered is a newsletter about pastries with a side of personal growth, written by a baker-slash-entrepreneur-slash-runner (and former financial planner). Subscribe to get each letter fresh from the oven, and hit the 💙 to help new readers discover it.
Really excited to see where this journey takes you next, Maddie! 🙌
SO excited for this delicious new beginning!