Exploring Life & Business with Katie Mertz of Jamtooth Baking Co

Today we’d like to introduce you to Katie Mertz

Hi Katie, thanks for joining us today. We’d love for you to start by introducing yourself.
My business journey began a mere six months ago (February 2024), though my passion and love for baking began long ago, as a ten-year-old glued to the Food Network. I’d rush home from school to catch the afternoon programming, which included my favorite, the Contessa herself–Ina Garten. From then on, my mom and I absorbed her content, and, baking hers and other recipes were how I learned to bake, with Mom learning right next to me.

I continued to bake at home with Mom through my teen and young adult years, and my excitement to try new recipes grew, as well as my capacity to try more complicated ones with relative success. And though a culinary career was always in the back of my mind, I was persuaded away it. I was told that bakery jobs were really hard, demanding, sweaty, didn’t pay well. And that working in those conditions would kill my love for the craft. So it wasn’t until I was in graduate school that I attempted an apprenticeship at the Blue Door Cafe & Bakery (Cuyahoga Falls). After that, I was hooked. I took my first full-time baking job at Breadsmith of Lakewood (Lakewood). From there, I went on to work for other area bakeries, picking up bits and bobs of knowledge and skill as I went along. And then, in 2016, I was lucky enough to score an apprenticeship that transformed my passion into a full-on obsession. And, as luck would have it, a career.

After I graduated with my MFA (NEOMFA, Creative Writing, Poetry), I took a job working for the Akron-Summit County Public Library. It was a better fit with the degree I’d just earned, and a great organization I really admired. But, a few months into that job, I started feeling a bit restless. I’ve learned that my heart loves the stability of an office job, but will always desire the heat of bakery work. So I reached out to the owners at a bakery that had opened only a few months before. The owners were Gen and Jud Smith, and the bakery was Brimfield Bread Oven.

I didn’t have much bakery experience, but I was enthusiastic, and that was, perhaps, what got me in the door. I started coming in at 5am on Sunday mornings to shape bread with Jud. It was the first time I’d had my hands in dough like this, and I wasn’t very talented in the beginning. But it’s amazing how fast you learn when you’re shaping loaves one after another, after another. It stayed this way for a little while–I worked my office job during the week, came in to play with dough on Sundays. When they realized I wasn’t going away, they added me to the payroll. When I asked for more hours, they had me work their Haymaker Farmers Market table on Saturdays. After about a year, I put in my notice at the library and started working at the Bread Oven full-time, just stunned that I had found a place where I could bake my favorite breads and pastries all day and get paid for it.

I was there for about three years, and during that time, I learned the ins and outs of European artisan baking–from sourdough bread to pastry lamination, baker’s percentages, how to know fire and heat and how to use it. I learned the value of baking good, healthy, hearty food for your community. I learned the value of good ingredients, and the even bigger value of knowing and supporting the farmers who grow those good ingredients. It was where I met Lizette Barton, who would become instrumental in my Jamtooth pastry production (she and her husband run Barton Farms & Gardens, and raise the happy hens who lay all the eggs we use!). While I was there, I was also gifted opportunities to extend my baking education through workshops, bread conferences, stage visits. I traveled to Asheville, Detroit, Columbus, Minneapolis–determined to learn as much as I could through the bakers I’d met through social media. I could expand, but suffice to say I credit so much of where I am today to what I learned at the Bread Oven, and what I continued to learn through Gen and Jud’s friendship, generosity, and mentorship.

I’m realizing now that this story isn’t brief at all, and I apologize if I’m going on too long. But there is a bit more, if you’ll indulge me.

After my time at the Bread Oven, I took a job at Asterisk Coffee Bar. It was a new concept from the same ownership behind Akron Coffee Roasters, and they were looking to bring on a baker to bake a selection of daily pastries. This was an opportunity to take all I’d learned to another level–essentially, I’d be running my own bakery operation under the umbrella of this already established business. I set up suppliers, created the menu, made the shopping list, and prepped and baked everything in a teeny kitchen in the back. However, after few months of this, my mother became very sick and I made the decision to leave.

In 2022, I returned to Asterisk to do pretty much the same job, though in the comfort of my own home since I had just given birth to my son. In that time, I carved out a fairly functional space in the dining room of our century home, and started affectionately referring to it as “the bakery,” and it really was. I had done my homework on cottage food law, so I knew which items were approved by the local health authorities to be sold this way. As a result, I wasn’t able to make much more than a selection of cookies and scones for the two locations (Asterisk and Akron Coffee Roasters), but Albert gave me full creative freedom and I fully ran with it.

This is the last part, I promise!

Towards the end of 2023, I was confronted with the opportunity which sealed my fate as a business owner. Myles and I had stopped at Portal West Coffee before our hike at Sand Run (a pour-over for me, milk steamer for him), and I got to chatting with the owner, Paul. He knew I was baking for Asterisk, and assumed I was doing so under my own LLC. He lamented his own pastry situation, and had been looking for quality cafe offerings since opening a few years before. He asked if I’d ever be interested in selling to him. But this would require that I start my own business.

Truthfully, I’d been thinking and dreaming of a business of my own for years. And this felt like just the push I needed to finally make it happen. So I did. I started meeting with James Griggy, a business advisor at the Small Business Development Center. We made a rough plan, filed a few things with the Secretary of State, and just like that, Jamtooth was formed. I had my second baby, as it were.

I filled my first order to Portal West on Valentine’s Day, 2024, and that, as they say, was that. After that first order, I started filling 3 orders/week for the cafe, growing my menu and my business a bit everyday. I’ve had a few catering orders, worked a few events, started selling wholesale to a handful of other accounts. I’ve taken on too much at times and learned what it feels like to have to backtrack and reorient. I don’t have a background in business, so there’s been a big learning curve in that respect, but I’ve learned there’s a resource for almost anything. Needless to say, it’s been amazing, and overwhelming, and nothing like I thought it would be, and also so much better. I’m still pinching myself.

I’m sure it wasn’t obstacle-free, but would you say the journey has been fairly smooth so far?
I’d be surprised if anyone answering this question said their journey was a smooth one. And for me, no, the road wasn’t smooth, and yes there were struggles, but I think, ultimately, what’s right will find you. And for me, that was baking.

I suppose my struggles in this industry really began when the pandemic hit. I was working midnights at a cafe/ bakery and was laid off, uncertain whether I would ever return to the trade in a professional manner. At the same time, my mother was very ill, and my dad and I were sharing caretaker duties. She would pass away in July 2021, months before I gave birth to my son in March 2022. I had found my way to nonprofit work the year before he was born, and left my office job to stay home with him.

I had a really hard time during those foggy early days of new motherhood. And, mixed with the heavy grief of losing my mother, without a job and a routine to ground me, I could have easily spiraled to a very dark place. But I turned to what I loved and what I knew: baking. In the wee hours of the morning, I baked the treats my mother and I loved to eat together. And for a moment, the kitchen smelled good, there were warm scones on the table, and my mother was still right there beside me.

When Myles was four months old, my friend and former boss, Albert Macso, reached out that he was looking to hire a baker at the cafe and asked if I might be interested. I wasn’t really in a position to seek a job outside the home–Myles was still nursing nonstop, waking every hour at night. It was a lot, and I didn’t feel like I had it in me to take on anything else. But, for some reason, I said yes, and we figured out a way for me to bake the pastries at home. And just like that, after being so unsure whether or not I’d return to baking, here I was, baking again.

And, I suppose, I haven’t looked back from that. A year and a half later, I started Jamtooth Baking Co. And, truthfully, I’m not sure it would have happened if everything hadn’t worked out just the way it did, struggles and all. If I hadn’t had Myles, I wouldn’t have been home. I wouldn’t have started baking out of that home. If I didn’t miss my mom so much, I’m not sure I would have returned to baking in any real way. If Albert hadn’t needed a baker, or hadn’t chosen me to reach out to. If, if, if. It’s beautiful and devastating and, at the end of the day, I’m just really thankful for the gift of obstacle, and for a curious heart that sees obstacles as opportunities. For all of it.

Thanks for sharing that. So, maybe next you can tell us a bit more about your business?
Jamtooth Baking Co is part home bakery, part local food champion, part poetry–an amalgam of all the things I truly love. But, I suppose my menu revolves around the broad genre of breakfast pastries. My style has been described as “that grandma who’s a really, really good baker.” Taste, texture, and flavor are my tops. And, if the ingredients are local, all the better. If I can grab a few of them from our home garden, even better than that. Most of my work experience has been in artisan bakeries, and most of the bakeries I frequent are artisan bakeries, so I would say I’m creating my baked goods through that lens. Though everything I produce is made in a very low-tech way; since it’s in my home (which is lovely but not very big), I don’t have the luxury of professional baking equipment, aside from a small convection oven and 20-qt mixer. Everything is made by hand because it has to be, but I think the product benefits from it.

As far as specific products, I’ve really grown to appreciate pie, as it’s such a perfect (and delicious!) vehicle for not only sweet fruit and berries, but savory foods, as well, and I’ve developed an all-butter pie crust through years of tweaking that really sings to me. So the handpies I make for the coffee shop have become really strong sellers. My background in sourdough rears its head in the muffins I make, which have a bit of sourdough starter and local spelt flour in the base. Most of my recipes work that way–strong bases that can be manipulated with different spices, add-ins, fruits based on the season (or what’s been squirreled awy in my freezer). I’m looking to introduce laminated products to my offerings here soon. I’ve been saying this for months and haven’t had the time to do the R&D, so I’m writing this down to be held accountable (she says, chuckling)!

Do you have recommendations for books, apps, blogs, etc?
I have a Master’s Degree in Creative Writing, so my life was books, books, books for a good portion of my life. I don’t have quite as much time to read as I once did, so I’ve turned to a few podcasts I really enjoy–The Sporkful, The Splendid Table, Ologies, and Gastropod. I have a few Substack subscriptions I love: The Sassafras Curio from Martin Philip, Kitchen Project from Nicola Lamb, and Have Your Cake from Liz Prueitt of Tartine fame. I recently started following Justine Doiron’s blog, and fell back in love with Sarah Kieffer’s Vanilla Bean Blog. I was a big fan of Bon Appetit Test Kitchen videos on YouTube pre-pandemic, and have followed a few of the program hosts (Sohla El-Waylly, Claire Saffitz, Priya Krishna, Rick Martinez, Molly Baz, Carla Lalli Music) as they’ve moved to other media outlets. I’m the same way with the NYT Cooking channel. I consume any baking cookbook I can get my hands on, and read it like a novel.

Contact Info:

• Instagram: @jamtoothbakingco