By Bonnie Posick
West Haven EDC
Although she bakes “a little something” every day, on Friday nights Roberta Garlock’s West Haven kitchen is alive with bubbling sourdough starter and the enticing aroma of loaves of bread in the oven.
Roberta began baking about 20 years ago, when she and her husband, Allen, were living in New Mexico and she was looking for a hobby. She received sourdough starter as a gift and, because she knew Allen liked sourdough bread, she researched ways to use it.
Roberta is completely self-taught: “There was nobody to help or guide me,” she said while she fashioned bread dough into a loaf one recent evening. “I did a lot of reading on King Arthur’s website.” She is loyal to King Arthur flour still.
She compared her sourdough starter, Dough-Ba Fett (borrowed from the Star Wars character), to the slime from the movie Ghostbusters: “When it bubbles back at you, you know it’s ready. It’s a living thing. I feed it flour and water right before I go to bed.”
Baking for her family became a priority when their son, Patrick, was born 13 years ago. Because Patrick has autism, Roberta pledged to feed him nothing but homemade food. “I am proud to say that he did not have a Pop-Tart until he was six because I made homemade ones that were bigger and fluffier.”
In 2014, Roberta and her family moved to Connecticut and, in 2015, she entered an apple pie in the West Haven Apple Fest contest. Her pie placed second in the contest’s final year. She continued to bake and share her talents with her new community through Westies Care. For several years, she baked cookies for about 100 families, and she helped make baskets and donated cookie trays to Westies Care during COVID.
Recently, her passion for baking led her to apply for a Cottage Food Operator license. This allows her to work from her home, but requires some safety measures, including training in food handling and management, and product labelling that includes a list of ingredients and her business information. On December 12, 2023, Our Daily Bakes was officially in business.
“I would love to open my own place,” Roberta said. “I would prefer a central location, or I could get a cart and go to New Haven and West Haven.”
For now, Roberta works full-time in accounting during the weekday, does prep work on Thursday evening, and bakes Friday and Saturday to fill weekend orders. Our Daily Bakes’ weekly menu varies, but bread is always featured – sourdough, jalapeno and Jack cheese, Italian herb and mozzarella, Havarti and dill, beer bread, and Nutella star bread. Roberta also offers muffins, pretzels, scones, biscotti, cookies, and a variety of loaves such as lemon, lemon blueberry, banana, and orange cranberry.
The menu is posted on Facebook mid-week at https://www.facebook.com/OurDailyBakes for pickup on Saturday. Orders may also be placed by text at (203) 859-8106 or by email at [email protected].