The winter marches may be over, but you can still support the women’s movement by grabbing your favorite feminist and exploring the five best female-owned bakeries in New York City. These female bakery owners are sweetening the city left and right, from baking up options for vegans, to creating jobs for women and the community.
Hot Bread Kitchen
Ever envisioned an opportunity where women come together to create a baking collective? Jessamyn Rodriguez did. Her dream of creating jobs and training women in baking techniques to facilitate careers began in her kitchen in Brooklyn. Today, Hot Bread Kitchen is located in an indoor market in East Harlem, La Marqueta. Hot Bread Kitchen is a cornerstone in the community for growing the entrepreneurial spirit in the area, while offering a variety of mouth-watering baked breads. The bakery offers breads from around the world, from challah to sourdough, but the chocolate babka is a menu stand-out.
Clementine Bakery
Vegan? That doesn’t mean you shouldn’t be able to enjoy rich desserts baked by women on the cutting edge of the baking industry in New York. Clementine Bakery was founded in 2012 by Michelle Barton. She founded the bakery with the desire to offer high quality baked goods that are 100 percent vegan. Baked fresh are vegan pies, cakes, and pastries. The bakery offers some of the best vegan cake that New York has to offer. Their triple chocolate cake leaves nothing to be desired and is better than many non-vegan chocolate cake options.
Amy’s Bread
Amy Scherber began Amy's Bread in 1992 in Hell's Kitchen with only five employees. Now with seven locations in Manhattan, and a production kitchen in Long Island City, you can get your fix of warm baked goods from The Village to Chelsea market. The classic baguettes as well as the yellow cake with pink frosting are two menu items that you are even better than the rest.
Levain Bakery
Best friends Connie McDonald and Pam Weekes embarked on the task of creating the world's greatest chocolate chip cookie back in 1994. Simple, no? While they succeeded in creating an incredible chocolate chip cookie, I believe it's their dark chocolate peanut butter chip cookie which is the best cookie offered by the bakery. With the perfect balance of chocolate and peanut goodness, this cookie is a must try for all peanut and chocolate lovers alike.
Flour Shop
Amirah Kassem, the founder of Flour Shop, captures you with her creativity and imagination the second you step into her Soho storefront. Clean white walls and furniture allow the bright rainbow cakes to pop at first glance. Kassem’s roots are in the fashion industry, and it is clear her eye for fashion influences her perfectly conceptualized cakes. The store offers three sizes of the famous "exploding cakes" (when you cut into them, sprinkles flow from the center), as well as rainbow cake push up pops, and a variety of cake balls. While the famous exploding cakes are what may first draw you to the store, Kassem’s cake balls (the carrot cake one’s especially), will keep you coming back.
Having roamed the city to find the best bakeries owned by women, I am inspired to keep seeking out other female-run restaurants, bakeries and shops. I know I have only scratched the surface. The womens' movement is more than just marches. It is women working to make a difference in every field of work, and succeeding in the baking industry is just one frontier.