Household Baking Co. turns out treats from a tiny kitchen in a cabin outside Paso Robles
COVID-19 dashed a lot of entrepreneurial dreams for Dustin “Dusty” and Kristin Stewart of Household Baking Co.
But the pandemic also fostered a few new hopes and unexpectedly opened wide some doors that had long been slammed shut.
Occupational upheaval is old ground for the two chefs, who have endured quite a few whiplash career impacts during their 15 years of side-by-side experience in the California culinary industry.
But they’re on the rise again now, operating a cottage-industry bakery out of a tiny-but-efficient commercially licensed kitchen in a family cabin on a hilltop west of Paso Robles in Running Deer Ranch.
And they like it that way.
These days, the Stewarts’ expanding roster of hungry fans return weekly to a few farmers markets, snatching up Household’s hand-made, naturally leavened sourdough breads, pillowy “Dusty Rolls” sandwich buns made with olive oil, “Fire Bread” spicy focaccia, unusual 40% whole wheat sourdough flour tortillas, and other products.
Soon, having just earned a Class B Health Department license for their home kitchen, they’ll be selling those trademark rolls to the Etto Pastificio pasta factory in Paso Robles, which the Italian specialties shop will then sell retail to its customers.
And they’ll also provide specialty desserts to Beta’s Biergarten German restaurant in San Luis Obispo, where Dusty Stewart previously worked as a chef.
How the Stewarts got here from there
Dusty was born in South Carolina and raised primarily by his grandparents, Betty and Lowell Cannon (a school baker and a pastor), he told The Tribune in a March 5 phone interview. Kristin was born and raised in Dinuba by a play therapist mom and a painter dad, now retired.
The Stewarts have been together almost constantly at work and in life since a day in 2004 when they met over a box of doughnuts in Long Beach. They graduated cum laude, concurrently, from Le Cordon Bleu in San Francisco, where he mastered culinary skills and she aced the patisserie courses.
Since then, the Stewarts married in 2009 (in San Francisco’s Golden Gate Park), and now have two daughters, Aubrey Bella, who is 10, and Lavinia “Lovey” Rose, 8. Both girls were born at home, raised in their parents’ commercial kitchens, and are being homeschooled by Kristin.
During those tumultuous years, the chefs worked their way up in their industry several times, only to be knocked down by varying combinations of factors, including bad timing, limited finances, high costs, few opportunities and, yes, the pandemic.
They’ve taken the “grow-grow-grow, faster-faster” business road before, and that headlong-hurtle journey toward being bigger no longer appeals to them.
It didn’t work for them, despite the faith of friends and investors, and their plans (to grow their Dusty Buns Bistro Bus fleet and two major-market restaurants) eventually were crushed, especially by one major investor that didn’t materialize.
They had to close their dream in 2016, but are still so grateful to and honor those who had believed and invested in them. “We pray to be able to make it up to them someday,” Dusty said emotionally. “That’s our plan and our hope.”
The Stewarts’ saga will sound painfully familiar to many ambitious, classically trained chefs who had their eyes on expanding their businesses, but not necessarily on watching their bottom lines.
The couple relocated to the Central Coast in 2017, where Dusty’s skills became locally evident when he worked at the commissary kitchen of Robin Covey’s Café Fiero in San Luis Obispo, as a chef at Beda’s Biergarten and as executive chef for Apple Farm Restaurant, all in San Luis Obispo.
Dusty and Kristin desperately missed working together, but they were on the upswing.
Then the pandemic hit, businesses closed, and, once again, the wheels fell off the Stewarts’ ride into a successful future.
“I’m too old to work three jobs, now,” Dusty said of that discouraging time.
Dusty said their first step toward the future was moving from San Luis Obispo into “the deep woods west of Paso Robles, to a cabin owned by Kristin’s wonderful parents, Rose and Raul Rubio.”
Household Baking Co. is born
The cabin now houses the family and the business, and the Stewarts all love it, said Dusty, who often acts as spokesperson for Household and the family, while Kristin is the artist and anchor of their lives and work.
As their customer base grows, the aptly named bakery’s equipment in the tiny, solar-powered kitchen is slowly expanding beyond the home-size Kitchen-Aid mixer they received 13 years ago as a wedding gift and their two electric, turbo-fan Moffat convection ovens that hold just four industrial sheetpans each.
The couple is so fond of that mixer, they have a spare just like it, and they alternate them when one breaks down and must be repaired.
The chefs have added a heated tortilla press for their sourdough flour tortillas, were recently given a used 20-quart commercial mixer, and they’re excitedly awaiting delivery of a professional “proof box,” a moist, temperature-controlled enclosed cabinet in which yeast products can rise at a measured rate.
But they can’t add many more gadgets to Household, given the constraints of their small hilltop cabin.
And that’s just the way the Stewarts want it.
Their cottage bakery relies, he said, on their reputation, their loyal and expanding customer base, the vibe, support and products of the markets at which they sell their goods, and the firm friendships they’ve made there and elsewhere in the county’s culinary industry.
For instance, a relationship they’d cultivated early with the now-closed Breaking Bread Bakery in San Luis Obispo (the owners have moved to Portugal, Dusty said) allowed the Stewarts to take over BBB’s coveted spots at the Cambria and Morro Bay farmers markets.
Experience breeds contentment with where they are
Household’s reputation for quality products is spreading, and offers to expand quickly keep coming at the family.
Not so fast.
With painful experience under their belts, they say, expanding is not an option they want to consider. Having gone through so much already, the Stewarts’ view of success has changed dramatically.
Dusty, 37, and Kristin, 38, say they’re focusing now on a proper balance of family, lifestyle, strong faith and the business they love.
“We want to do it right this time,” he said, “dig into what we have, make it last, make it sustainable, and be thankful for having this chance.”
They’re thriving, Dusty said, as “we work together from home, one day at a time and keep praying. A cottage business puts a cap on what you can do. It feels like we were made to do this, this way, here, now.”
They also want to share what they’ve learned along the way with others who want to succeed in today’s cutthroat culinary world ruled by superstars, one that is so often unkind, underpaid and fiscally unsustainable for most employees.
“We want to help inspire other family entrepreneurs,” he added, “help the farmers markets grow, and remind people of all the reasons why they should shop at the farmers markets.”
Where to find Household Baking Co.
Currently, the Stewarts sell their made-from-scratch baked goods from a booth at the farmers markets in:
- San Luis Obispo (2:30-5 p.m. Tuesdays at Farm Supply on Tank Farm Road);
- Cambria (2:30-5 p.m. Fridays, vets hall parking lot on Main Street);
- Paso Robles (9 a.m. to 1 p.m. Saturdays, 11th and Spring streets by the park);
- Morro Bay (2:30-5 p.m. Saturdays, on Main Street).
Read more about the Stewarts and Household Baking Co. at HouseholdBakingCo.com, or on their hashtag-filled Facebook page at at facebook.com/HouseholdBaking. You’ll also find them on Twitter and Instagram, where Dusty Stewart posts regularly.
On each, the postings nearly always end with “#ThankGodForFood.”
