MERIDIAN, ID — A Meridian mom is receiving national recognition for her in-home sourdough baking skills.
- Emerald Hanson is a Meridian mom whose love of baking turned into a business
- She's currently ranked in the top 10 for a nationwide baking competition with $10,000 on the line
- If you'd like to help out and vote for Emerald, click on this link!
(Below is the transcript from the broadcast story)
Emerald Hanson didn't necessarily see herself baking for a living, but it certainly runs in her family.
"Well, I'm Latina, so I always grew up in the kitchen baking with my mother. In fact, she was actually a baker herself over at Bunny Bread back in Ohio. They had a place called Brown's Bakery," said Little Shop or Sourdough Owner Emerald Hanson.
As a mother of two, she needed a little well-deserved time to herself.
"Kinda hard to adjust when you have not just one baby, but two babies in the course of two years. So I just needed a little something to bring me back in the kitchen and I started kneading dough for breads, and it just felt right," said Hanson.
Combine that with her health-first attitude.
"When I go to the store, I look at the back of the ingredient lists on just my favorite breads that I've purchased for years, and they're so long! And with this, it's literally just water, flour, and salt," smiled Hanson.
And suddenly, making all things sourdough became a passion for this Meridian mom.
"Once I got the hang of it, I realized it's not that difficult to maintain, and it's actually something that helps me get up in the morning, aside from my family, something that's just for me," said Hanson.
Friends and family thought her breads and baked items were so good, she should start selling them.
"I heard it so many times, I started to truly believe it," said Hanson.
So last September, she started up her cottage bakery called Little Shop of Sourdough.
"I just wanted to kind of dip my toes in it, and I was really pleasantly surprised at the response from the community," said Hanson.
The orders quickly started piling up, a bittersweet blessing as the one-woman crew was doing everything from her own small kitchen.
"It takes, you know, almost an hour to bake two loaves at a time," said Hanson.
And nearly as fast as she had started her business, she entered a nationwide competition called "The Greatest Baker."
"Everyone can enter at really any experience level from I just started baking yesterday to I've been baking cakes for 20 years professionally," said Hanson.
But she's competing to hopefully win the grand prize, a life-changing $10,000 that she would put towards her business.
"My process right now, it would still take about 12 hours to get my dough ready, but switch out from using my Dutch ovens and get a traditional, a real bread oven. So it would be a professional set up to not bake two but twelve loaves at once, which would be a huge difference," said Hanson.
But to win, she needs votes from the public, and is hoping the good people of the Treasure Valley and beyond will log on and help take Meridian's own Little Shop of Sourdough to the top!
"To get their votes would be incredible, I mean, any type of support in my business is a true honor, whether it's just an order or a simple vote. Like I said, it would be very life-changing for me and my family, not only giving me those hours back out of the kitchen with them, but also being able to get orders our faster and having the ability to also do something that's really important to me, which is giving back to the community," smiled Hanson.
If you'd like to help out and vote for Emerald, click on this link!
