Friday, April 26, 2024
Kris Trawick prized her dream enough to scrub toilets for it.
It paid off.
Three years after earning a degree in culinary management – during which time she cleaned offices and condos, saving every dime she could – the mother of three and grandmother of one has opened her own bakery.
It’s a hit.
For now, Trawick’s BAKED! Bread & Pastry Co. is open only from 8 a.m. until noon on Saturdays, but she has already reached line-out-the-door success.
She has relied thus far on word-of-mouth advertising from customers who bought her baked goods from the window of the blue trailer she hauled to farmers markets over the summer.
BAKED! Bread & Pastry Co.is located at 401 Cleveland Road behind Grumps Burgers, where Uptown Arts used to be.
Trawick closed on the building on Jan. 31. By mid to late May, she had done enough renovation work to be able to start “playing around” at baking.
By June, she was hitting the farmers markets. When they began winding down in late August, she began opening her bakery on Saturdays.
To prepare for Saturday sales, Trawick and her four part-time employees – Emily Harris, Julye Shepherd and mother-daughter team Teresa and Michelle Reeves – start on Monday. They mix dough, prepare fillings and make cookies to store before baking them on Friday night.
Tuesdays involve butter blocks and “laminating.” A sheeter – the newest piece of equipment and a source of pride for Trawick – folds butter into dough and “locks it.” The process results in 81 layers, Trawick said.
The dough continues to be worked as the week progresses.
“It’s a process,” Trawick said. “The dough takes about three days. On Wednesday or Thursday we shape it. So, we’re constantly pulling the dough in and out of the freezer and in and out of the refrigerator. It’s building flavor in the dough.”
Baking for Saturday’s sales begins at about 12:30 p.m. every Friday.
Volunteers Telise Rodelv, Tammy Fox and Connie LaClair box up pre-orders and help with other tasks, even washing dishes. At times, Trawick’s cousin Brenda Darling drives all the way from Mesquite to help.
Baked goods are placed on tables that form a makeshift counter.
Menu items include bacon cheddar chive scones, bear claws, chocolate croissants, pop tarts, morning buns with orange zest (a Granbury favorite), ginger molasses cookies, salted chocolate chip cookies, rosemary olive and cranberry walnut sourdough breads, and more.
Trawick and her crew are continually trying out different recipes, which she refers to as “research and development,” and create walk-in menus that contain such fare as apple croissants with whipped topping and caramel rum drizzle, Julye’s Bread Pudding and Michelle’s Pumpkin Butterscotch Whoopie Pies.
The entrepreneur said that she wants her bakery to be a place where women thrive and feel loved so that they can give love to others.
“It’s all about raising up women,” she said.
The bakery’s menus are posted earlier in the week on Facebook and Instagram. Pre-orders can be made by sending Trawick a private message with an email address. She then emails the invoice. Pre-payment is required.
Those who pre-order can skip the line and go directly to Rodelv at the pre-order table, though Trawick said that more often than not pre-order customers end up in line to buy more goodies.
Even though Trawick should feel exhausted after baking all night, the Saturday morning sales are the best time of the week for her.
“I get huge energy from everybody,” she said. “I’m on Cloud Nine when I’m talking to people.”
DREAMS CAN COME TRUE
Trawick and her husband Jeff have lived here only a year but a lot has happened in that time.
Jeff works in finance for a rent-to-own outdoor shed company. For years he traveled the country but his company wanted him to locate to the Grandview office and stay put there.
The couple’s three grown children remain in Florida. Their youngest is 20.
Trawick said that since she had to leave her family behind, Jeff let her pick wherever she wanted to live within an hour’s drive of Grandview.
They came to Granbury on a day trip and visited the Nutshell Bakery. (Trawick feels the urge to visit bakeries everywhere she goes.) They saw that there was hustle and bustle on the Granbury square even in the middle of the week.
That was it for Trawick. She knew that Granbury was the place for them, and it was where she wanted her dream to take root.
Although her bakery is now up and running she is still training staff and even continuing to learn herself despite all those cooking and baking classes.
“It really is for me, but it’s very hard,” she said of the line of work she chose later in life after working years as an office manager for a construction company and then in commercial insurance.
Right now there is only one table for customers at BAKED! Bread & Pastry Co., but some day there will be more.
The next phase of Trawick’s dream is to serve dine-in breakfasts and lunches. The lunch menu will consist of delicious soups, salads and sandwiches made with sourdough breads straight from the bread oven that took two forklifts to get into the building.
Diners will be able to watch bakers busily at work behind plate glass windows.
Trawick said that her husband “has been a huge, huge support from the beginning. There’s never any pull against me at home.”
Nor is there any pull against her from customers, even when they queue up as early as 7:30 a.m. on Saturdays to wait for the bakery to open.
“Instead of being disgruntled, they’re like, ‘This is so exciting. We’re so happy for you,’” Trawick said. “They were pulling for me even when they had to wait 30 minutes in line for a pastry.”
