Via Community News Service, a University of Vermont journalism internship
RANDOLPH — Caroline Anders and Mauricio Lopez Martinez have swapped their New York City kitchen for a 125-year-old farmhouse in Randolph, where they opened a new bakery.
The couple owns the Oaxacan-style, full-inclusion — or unsifted — flour microbakery, Atla’s Conchas. They specialize in conchas, cookies, granola, bread, cake and freshly milled flour.
Lopez Martinez and Anders met while working at the bakery at Weaver Street Market, a food cooperative in North Carolina.
“When I started, I knew absolutely nothing about baking bread,” Anders said. “Then over eight years, I learned it all and got a lot of experience and felt like I was ready to do my own thing.”
Lopez Martinez, who worked at Weaver Street Market for 20 years, got his start at 10 years old, when he started apprenticing in his family’s traditional bread bakery in Oaxaca, Mexico.
The couple decided to open up their own bakery and relocate to New York City in 2024 after Anders developed baker’s asthma, a type of occupational asthma that develops from prolonged exposure to flour, which can make it difficult to breathe.
“I wore an N95 mask constantly,” she said. “I did it because that’s my passion. But over time, the flour allergy morphed into a bigger environmental allergy where I became severely allergic to grass, and it basically meant that I couldn’t go outside.”
Anders needed an immediate solution to her allergy, prompting the move to New York City due to the lower amount of grass compared to North Carolina. She feared if she didn’t get away from the grass, her allergy would worsen to where she wouldn’t be able to bake anymore.
The couple lasted exactly one year in Spanish Harlem, where they set up shop. Their bakery was embraced by the community but also faced many challenges, such as food access, Anders said.
“Spanish Harlem is kind of like a food desert,” she said. “We were there to change that, but it also meant that if we were going to buy ingredients that met our standards, we had to get out of that area.”
Juggling bakery operations and travel to purchase ingredients meant 90-hour work weeks and little time to expand.
“Really, when you boil it down to what I do, it’s schlepping. I schlep. I schlep this from there and that to there,” Anders said. “That is the job of the foodie in New York. If you live in a food desert area and care about quality, you schlep.”
The couple ultimately decided to leave New York because of anticipated federal budget cuts to SNAP programs, which provide essential revenue to the markets where they sold baked goods and bought ingredients.
“Many of the markets, including the one that we were selling at, were either being canceled or were told that instead of operating year-round, they could only operate seasonally, like five months out of the year,” Anders said.
They began searching for a new location for their business. Ideally, one with more space to expand production.
The couple sought proximity to New York to maintain personal and professional ties, as well as a colder climate where grass pollen remains dormant longer to accommodate Anders’ environmental allergies.
“We had driven through Vermont. We liked many areas of it,” Anders said. “It matched our needs in terms of proximity to New York but also seemed like a safe place to be considering climate change and forward-thinking mentality.”
The week after their last day of service in late June of this year, Lopez Martinez and Anders took a risk and moved all of their ingredients and equipment into a storage unit in Barre with no bakery location or house purchased yet.
“(We) just took that leap. We were very settled that this was like the right thing to do,” Anders said. “And then it was just like, ‘Well, next step is to find a house.’”
After several weeks of searching, they found a 125-year-old farmhouse in Randolph that had enough space to convert into a bakery. The couple moved in at the end of July and started renovations shortly after.
In the meantime, Lopez Martinez and Anders started selling Mexican pan dulces at the Chelsea Farmers Market and stayed for the full season.
“People have been super supportive, and many folks came out to the Chelsea Farmers Market and expressed wanting to continue to support us,” Anders said.
Conchas and Pan de Muerto are pan dulces, traditional Mexican sweet breads.
Conchas, meaning “shell” in Spanish, are known for their colorful and crumbly cookie-like tops, while Pan de Muerto, flavored with orange and anise, is commonly used as an offering during Día de los Muertos, a holiday dedicated to honoring loved ones who have passed and welcoming the return of their spirits.
The pan dulces from Atla’s Conchas are a twist on traditional recipes from Lopez Martinez’s mother. Over time, Lopez Martinez and his brothers have been working to bring their family recipes to the public.
“Basically, they called their mom and said, ‘Hey, Mom. Remind me of the recipe,’ and got like, kind of like a rough, rough idea of what it probably was because they didn’t write anything down. It’s all by feel,” Anders said.
Though the traditional way to make pan dulces is with white flour, which was first introduced to Mexico in the 16th century due to colonialism, Lopez Martinez and Anders decided to instead use full-inclusion flour exclusively in their pastries.
Full-inclusion flour, or unsifted flour, means that all of the grain is utilized, including the germ, bran and endosperm, to preserve the nutritional content. To ensure their flour is unsifted, Lopez Martinez and Anders mill their own flour in-house daily with a stone grain mill.
“To combine the Mexican traditions and the traditional recipes that we do here with the full-inclusion, it makes a big political statement,” Anders said. “Just because the (the Spaniards) came to this country and said, ‘We want to make bread,’ and said it should be with white flour doesn’t mean that they were right.”
Using different types of grains allows the couple to experiment with unique flavors, textures and baking properties.
Lopez Martinez and Anders supply their grains from small, local farms, such as NEK Grains from the Northeast Kingdom, Wild Hive Farm in Upstate New York and Ramona Farms, their farthest supplier, in Arizona.
Anders calls full-inclusion flour “the flour of the future,” and calls for consumers to shop locally as climate change continues to impact crop yields.
“We’re going to need to go back to local farmers, local millers, local brewers, local bakers, using what is available. And what is going to be available is going to be what can grow well in the specific microclimate that we live in,” Anders said.
Anders hopes to inspire more people to work with full-inclusion flour. Atla’s Conchas has a section of their website dedicated to teaching full-inclusion recipes and explaining climate change’s impact on grains.
As for the future of Atla’s Conchas, construction is still underway and won’t be fully complete until next spring.
But Lopez Martinez and Anders will be at the Chelsea Holiday Market Nov. 15, selling Pan De Muerto, conchas and cookies.
“I am feeling very optimistic and hopeful for us having a great relationship with the community here and supporting the local food scene,” Anders said. “I’m really excited for when the new market season starts up next spring and seeing where we’ll go from there.”