Behind the Scenes with the Good Earth Bakery

We sat down with Daniel, our longtime Fairfax Bakery Manager, to get the behind-the-scenes scoop on how his team navigates the holiday season and comes up with new recipes sure to delight.

When asked where our Good Earth bakers get their inspiration for new recipes, Daniel offers a few pathways. Some of our best inspiration comes from customers sharing their feedback, requests, and dietary needs. Additionally, our bakers monitor for flavor and technique trends in the marketplace. Lastly, health is key in the creative process. “We try to push the limit of what is possible, and our goal is to make food that no one even notices is healthy because it is so delicious,” Daniel shares. When it comes to ingredients, our bakers look for opportunities to optimize the nutrient density of our baked goods, often opting for ingredients that boost the amount of fiber in an item or reduce the amount of sugar. One of our newest Bakery creations, Buckwheat Banana Bread, is a great example of the work the team is doing to improve on the nutritional profile of our offerings with a high fiber ingredient like buckwheat flour.

Perfecting a new recipe often takes several iterations, and our team bakes multiple experimental batches of a recipe before it’s ready for the shelf, adjusting ratios on ingredients until we get just the right flavor and texture. This is especially true in the case of our vegan and wheat-free offerings, where we’re using ingredients like flax seeds and chia seeds to replace more traditional ingredients like eggs. For Daniel and his team, this practice is invaluable, and each recipe test in an opportunity to learn and spark creativity.