“My dream and life goal was to retire here,” says Wyman. Wyman started visiting New Paltz when she was at the CIA to take advantage of the area’s many trails and nature preserves, and stayed connected to the Hudson Valley throughout her career. Now, doughnuts make up most of the business at the Montclair bakery. “We put the other half out for sale, and they went so quickly that we decided to do it again.” After Wyman won Food Network’s Doughnut Showdown competition in 2014, the demand for doughnuts skyrocketed. “I think my friend and I ate more than half of them,” she says with a laugh. In an experiment with her coworker, Wyman fried a few dozen doughnuts using dough from a brioche bread recipe. In 2012, Wyman opened Montclair Bread Company and soon after made her first batch of doughnuts in January 2013. When the 2008 recession hit and the bakery closed, Wyman moved to New Jersey to work as a recipe developer, creating breads for major chains like Wegmans, Target, and The Cheesecake Factory. After graduation, she baked at Amy’s Bread in Manhattan, eventually helping her friend open a bakery in Milford, Pennsylvania. Her love for bread only continued to develop when she worked as a barista and then baker at Bread Alone Bakery in Woodstock. “I found that there was something really soulful about nurturing this dough for 24 or 36 hours and then being rewarded with a gorgeous loaf of bread in the end.” It kind of smelled like my grandma’s basement, in a good way,” says Wyman. Wyman relocated to Hyde Park to enroll in the Culinary Institute of America’s baking and pastry arts program, where she discovered a passion for breadmaking. When she realized that in order to obtain a full-time teaching contract, she would need to get a master’s degree in education it dawned on her that she’d rather continue her education in culinary school. After getting a degree from the University of Florida in French, Wyman began substitute teaching. She sold cookies and brownies throughout college to pay rent. “It wasn’t something that seemed accessible,” explains Wyman. She didn’t know any other home bakers like her grandmother, and baking shows weren’t popular on TV yet. Growing up, Wyman didn’t think it was possible to become a full time pastry maker. She grew up in Maryland, decorating paper plates with frosting as her grandmother made wedding cakes in her basement. Wyman began baking before she was even in elementary school. After a blow-out summer selling doughnuts at the New Paltz Open Air Market, on November 5, Wyman will open the doors to her brick-and-mortar bakery on Main Street in New Paltz. She’s come a long way since then, with her signature fried brioche doughnuts earning her a spot as one of Bake magazine’s “25 Most Influential Bakers in the US” in 2015. “I learned to write my name with buttercream before I could hold a pencil,” says Rachel Wyman, owner of Gunkin’ Doughnuts.
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January 2023
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