08/16/2026
Sometimes a fellow baker amazes us with their product or their character. The Bread Lady- Lake Ann, Michigan does both. Old Mission Bakery continues to cheer you on ❤️ 👏
Well this is a little surreal. ❤️
There are a lot of things that pull on my attention in any given day.
There are oven timers and phone calls. My children and my brother. Coffee decisions and storage units. Special orders and grocery lists. Employees and customers. Visiting friends and dinner plans. Bread that needs to be baked, messages that need to be answered, and approximately 35 other things I was definitely supposed to remember without writing down.
And somewhere in the middle of all of those things, there are emails. And sometimes I even get the chance to check them.
A few months ago, buried in the normal chaos of life, motherhood, and running a bakery, I opened one telling me that I had been selected as one of the Leaders of Northern Michigan.
And I am so very humbled to say, it was one of the most meaningful emails I’ve ever received.
I’ve won bakery awards before, and every single one of them means an incredible amount to me. I’m proud of the bread we make. I’m proud of what this little business has become.
But this one was different, because it wasn’t really about bread. It let the focus be on who we are and who we want to be.
I sat down and spent hours thinking about how I wanted to respond to the interview. I wrote about starting this business as a broke mom who needed to make a few extra dollars. I wrote about the people who believed in me, the customers who became friends, the community that carried this business through some really hard seasons, and why I’ve always believed that if I’m going to have the privilege of being known in my community, I have a responsibility to use that for something good.
And then yesterday, I got to hold the finished article in my hands. And of everything I said, this is what they chose to put across the top:
“I don’t worry much about bread.
I know how to make bread.
I worry about people.
I want to be a good steward of the trust they’ve placed in me…
I want to continue building something that brings more kindness, connection, and community into the world.”
And maybe that’s why this one means so much. Because I don’t really want the focus of the bakery to be just that we make good bread.
I want our legacy to be that we did something good with the life, the business, the community, and the people we are trusted with.
Thank you for the support, encouragement, and ridiculous amount of joy that is constantly thrown in the direction of my little bakery.
It’s a really big deal to me.
Love you all. ❤️
