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Jennifer Moore makes her own glaze for her homemade rolls because she doesn't like cream-cheese frosting.
Jennifer Moore prepares a glaze for the cinnamon rolls that she makes in her home bakery business, Baking Bread LLC. |
Jennifer Moore dropped a handful of mini-marshmallows into the pot she was stirring in her spotless Locust Grove kitchen.
The tiny white morsels melted and thickened the other ingredients just enough to form a glaze that would soak into the freshly baked cinnamon, strawberry-shortcake and butter-pecan rolls she'd prepared to sell to customers online and at two area coffee shops.
The icing recipe is her own, one the creative owner and sole employee of Baking Bread LLC dreamed up because she doesn't like cream-cheese frosting. But the master recipe for the soft, yeasty rolls has been handed down in her mother's family for generations.
"I get a lot of older customers who say, 'I haven't had a roll like this since my mother made them.' It takes them back," Moore said. "That makes me happy."
Some of her own fondest memories are of times spent in the kitchen with her maternal grandmother. Thelma Louise Winfield, whose face is Moore's logo, doesn't use recipes, but can tell by touch, taste and smell if something needs a pinch more of this or a dollop more of that.
"I was the only one she didn't kick out of the kitchen [when I was a child]," Moore said. "Everyone else wanted to eat. I just watched her. It was like a symphony."
Among Winfield's specialties was a recipe for yeast rolls that had been passed down by her mother. Moore loved them but didn't try her hand at making them herself until she was 22. Christmas was fast approaching, and she couldn't wait for Winfield to bake a batch. Unfortunately, her first attempt was a disaster, and she had to call her grandmother for advice.
"I said: 'I'm not doing something right. How in the world did you do it?'"
After talking it over, they realized she'd used too much flour, hadn't mixed the ingredients by hand in the right order--using a mixer toughens the dough--and the temperature setting for the oven had been wrong.
Once she got the recipe straightened out, Moore began seeing new possibilities. Instead of the plain rolls her grandmother had always made, she decided to use the dough as the base for cinnamon rolls with her gooey marshmallow glaze. When she took a pan of them to a party, friends couldn't stop raving.
"They said, 'Jen, why aren't you selling these?'"
Encouraged, Moore decided to whip up a part-time business in 2006 selling yeast and cinnamon rolls as well as pies and breads. At that point, she was working full time as a contractor at the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office in Alexandria.
"I told my husband that I wanted to have something to fall back on," Moore said.
They drew up a business plan, got approval from the Virginia Department of Agriculture and Consumer Services and put up a website, bakingbreadllc .com. Having the groundwork in place proved providential in 2009 when there was a massive layoff in her office.
"I wouldn't say that I was wishing I'd get laid off, but working in such a stressful environment wasn't good for me health-wise," Moore said. "It was a relief."
She began working on her bakery business full time and was soon selling to customers all across the country. A Texas couple getting married in Fredericksburg, for example, ordered 200 cinnamon rolls arranged in tiers instead of opting for a traditional groom's cake. The bride liked the rolls so much, Moore said, that she surprised her husband with some on their first anniversary.
Recently, Moore began developing new ways to use the family dough recipe to set herself apart from the competition. She's created strawberry-shortcake rolls, blueberry-walnut rolls, chocolate-coconut-almond rolls and her favorite, butter-pecan rolls. Next up is a lemon-lavender-rosemary roll topped by a lemon icing accented with lavender, mint and rosemary.
"I thought of it as something you could have with tea," said Moore, who finds that inspiration sometimes strikes in her dreams.
She also sells apple and sugar-free apple pies, yeast and potato rolls and several kinds of breads, including honey fig. Online prices range from $5 for a loaf of wheat bread to $15 for a pie. Cinnamon rolls start at five for $10, and the other varieties are slightly higher.
Locally, Moore's goodies are available at Genie Babie's Coffee Cafe in Locust Grove and 25 30 Espresso near the train station in Fredericksburg. Spencer Keady, 25 30 Espresso's manager, said that she was looking for locally made pastries when Moore walked through the door and said she made cinnamon rolls.
"We liked her and hired her on the spot," Keady said. "We order from her probably every week. Our customers like the fact that they're locally made and homemade."
The cinnamon and strawberry-shortcake rolls are especially popular, as are the butter-pecan rolls, she said. Some of her regulars order the same thing every day, while others alternate between two or three favorites.
For now, Moore is happy working out of her kitchen, which enables her to be there when her children Nolan, 9, and Nyla, 5, get on the bus in the morning and when they bring their friends over after school to play. Sometimes Nolan, who loves her rolls, will help with the baking by crushing walnuts for the blueberry-walnut version.
"We've got to start small before we get to the big stuff," Moore said.
Eventually she'd like to have a bakery where she could make, sell and ship her rolls, breads and pies. It would also have a banquet facility, and caterers would be able to rent the bakery's commercial kitchen.
"It's really hard to find a certified kitchen that you can rent," Moore said.
She said her grandmother loves what she has done so far with the family recipe, and is especially tickled that she's on the logo.
"She's so proud. She's like, 'My face is on the Internet!'" Moore said.
Cathy Jett: 540/374-5407
Email: cjett@freelancestar.com
