Real stories from women building baking businesses with heart.
Extraordinary baking businesses are built not in spite of hard seasons, but right in the middle of them. Made to be listened to while you bake.
Two kinds of episodes
Proofed Conversations
Long, honest interviews with bakers building businesses rooted in craft, community, and care. The risks, the doubts, the lessons, and the love that keeps them going.
Proofed Notes
Brief reflections meant to keep you company in the kitchen. Encouragement, perspective, and reminders about patience, intuition, and building with intention.
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Michelle Chesser: You Are Not Walmart
Seventeen years ago Michelle lived in a two-bedroom trailer in Southeast Missouri with her husband and four kids, and brought box-mix cupcakes to a farmers market. Today she bakes from the commercial kitchen her bakery helped build and coaches home bakers through the Baker’s Library. We get into the $2,000 magic door, the season the business ate her, charging more to bake less, and why you are not Walmart.
Built by a baker, for bakers.
Everything Michelle said about building a bakery in a kitchen that wasn't built for one is the reason Marraine exists. Marraine is French for godmother: someone who takes the orders, the messages, the scheduling and the payments so bakers can stay in the kitchen. I built it because cottage food bakers deserve a real place to sell, not a marketplace that treats us like a hobby and not a social feed where orders get lost in the DMs.