the Carters get a bread oven.

Hi,

this is Melissa from Mama Bear's Sourdough, an Austin-born organic sourdough micro bakery.

I started my sourdough journey in 2022 when my son was less than a year old.

Becoming a mom and being responsible for a tiny baby made me more conscious about the foods we were consuming and all of the harmful seed oils, preservatives and additives in 99% of store-bought bread.

I was extremely frustrated at not being able to find BREAD that was organic, high quality and REAL (easily digestible with bioavailable nutrients).

So I rolled up my sleeves and got to work.

I began baking bread with instant yeast and quickly decided I wanted to go a step further and began researching various methods of creating my own sourdough starter and thus "Mama Bear" our starter was born!

I immediately fell in love with the entire process I wanted to bake and bake and bake so I began gifting my bread to my fellow neighbors, family and friends (and yogis!).

I was soon encouraged to put my bread out there for people to purchase.

So I took a leap of faith despite being scared and I did it.

We can really say we had humble beginnings...

If you are an Austin local you may have seen Nate, Jace and I on the corner of South Congress and E Elizabeth st with a small table displaying our bread.

Some weekends we'd sell out, other's we'd sell less than 5 loaves with a ton extra we would end up giving away to the homeless and to our neighbors.

I prayed and worked and prayed some more..

Slowly our weekly orders began to grow from 1-2 to 4-6, we were seeing small but steady growth.

Then one day while browsing Instagram I came across a farmer's market that was in desperate need of a bread vendor, and strangely enough the manager market was an old coworker of mine from my old restaurant days at Eddie V's (hey Yo!!!).

God truly works in strange ways, but it was all His plan!

This market was prayers answered. We grew our customer base a ton from there, also by word of mouth and from my Instagram page.

However, all of this time I have been working from very small kitchens with extremely limited space.

While I am able to bake 4 loaves at a time in my home oven, it still takes me somewhere around 10-13 hours of non-stop baking to get 40-60 loaves out, which is only a portion of our weekly bakes. That isn't counting the cinnamon rolls, sandwich loaves, scones, cookies, pizza crusts, etc..

We have recently moved into the house of our dreams after living in apartments for the last 6-7 years. Thank you, God.

We finally have a designated work area specifically for our business.

We've ordered more equipment and even an extra refrigeration unit to keep in our garage which that alone takes so much stress off my shoulders.

The only thing next on our list we need help on is getting a bread oven!

I plan on getting the RackMaster 2020 oven, which is a sturdy, state-of-the-art bread oven.

Having this oven would be a huge HUGE blessing and time saver.

Not only would I be able to bake in higher quantities (12-15 loaves at a time.) but I'd also get some of my time back while at the same time continuing to provide high quality food to my community.

Right now, baking 12 loaves takes me sometimes up to 3 hours...with my new oven it would take me maybe 45 minutes max (cue the heart eyes).

I'd finally be able to increase my capacity for our weekly pick-ups/deliveries and our markets while also having more time to spend with my boys and frolicking in our backyard!

If you find it in your heart to donate, GOD BLESS YOU

if you can't donate, GOD BLESS YOU!

Thank you for reading this far, I appreciate your support more than you know!!