Artisan Baker. Dancer. Lecturer

After 20+ years as a professional dancer, Joe studied at the International Culinary Center where he quickly fell in love with the chemistry and art of baking bread, and went on to complete the ICC’s professional artisan bread baking course. He has worked for Le Pain Quotidien, Chef Daniel Boulud, Dean & Deluca, and Sadelle’s and has taught artisan bread baking for the ICC, and Bleecker Street Bakery for which he developed baking classes and signature baked goods. He also started his own micro bakery Cola Bread Club, and partnered in the opening of Small Sugar, a cafe for which he was the Director of Bread and Pastry. He now lives in Chicago and teaches modern dance at Northwestern University.

Tandem Coffee

Briana Holt is a born baker. She has baked all over the island of Martha’s Vineyard and also learned a thing or 2 in NYC from her time at M. Wells and Pies and Thighs. Briana is also a recent James Beard nominee. Will, Kathleen ( and Briana have been friends for almost 20 years. A bakery is something they had been scheming about doing together since they all lived in NYC back in 2011..

Author: The New Bread Basket

A writer and change agent, Amy works to add social values and economic viability to farms, cities, families, the emergency feeding system, and communities. Her love for pancakes led her to write a book about flour, THE NEW BREAD BASKET: How the New Crop of Grain Growers, Plant Breeders, Millers, Maltsters, Bakers, Brewers, and Local Food Activists Are Redefining Our Daily Loaf.

She lives in Troy, New York, and works with the Artisan Grain Collaborative in the Upper Midwest, and the Northeast Grainshed to create networks that support regional grains. She loves to create bridges between ideas and people through food.

#storycooking

Ellie Markovitch recently moved to Maine with her husband, two children and dog Kora. She  applies her passion for innovative and sustainable food practices and her unique skill set that includes visual and social media storytelling and community engagement.

Ellie has a professional background in photojournalism and an MFA degree in Electronic Arts. She is also a skillful cook. Her work revolves around media and food literacy. She uses food as a starting point for conversations and community building. As a member of the Chefs’ Consortium of New York State, she helped develop and deliver programs that raise awareness of the local food systems. While in Upstate New York, she also developed and ran educational programs in collaboration with local organic farmers and the Agricultural Stewardship Association.

Flour Bakery

An honors graduate of Harvard College with a degree in Applied Mathematics and Economics, Joanne left a career as a management consultant to enter the world of professional cooking. She started as garde-manger cook at Boston’s renowned Biba restaurant, then worked as a pastry cook at Bentonwood Bakery in Newton, and in 1995 was hired as Pastry Chef at Rialto restaurant in Cambridge.

In 2000, she opened Flour, a bakery and café, in Boston’s South End. Flour features breakfast pastries, breads, cakes, cookies, and tarts as well as sandwiches, soups, and salads. In 2007 she and her husband and business partner Christopher Myers opened a second branch of Flour in the Fort Point Channel. They now operate 9 Flour bakeries in Boston/Cambridge in addition to a sister restaurant Myers+Chang, which earned 4 stars in the Boston Globe.