Kathy Anderson got her start baking sourdough bread during the COVID-19 pandemic, but now she runs a thriving business selling over 32 different types of bread, ranging from sweet to savory, along with several other items at her farmer’s market booth including salsa, jams, jellies, and pickles.

Kathy Anderson’s love of baking bread started at the same time many others’ did: during the COVID-19 pandemic.

“A lot of people got really into baking over COVID because they had a lot of extra free time,” Kathy says. “Making sourdough bread in particular got really popular, and that’s what I got into as well.”

Kathy first learned about baking sourdough bread from her daughter-in-law, who had started baking bread of her own with a 20-year-old starter she had acquired from Australia. After sending some of that same starter to Kathy, the sourdough obsession began – though not without a serious learning curve.

“Sourdough starters are fickle beasts,” Kathy explains. “Not only are there different types of starters that all have different ratios of ingredients and feeding schedules, but starting one of your own can take over two weeks to get it to a point where the yeast is developed enough to bake with. They’re also extremely temperature sensitive, and your bread is going to turn out very different depending on how warm or cold it is in your kitchen.”

Once Kathy had her starter and the recipe that went with it, the baking experiments began, which presented its own set of unique challenges.

“I had the recipe that came with the starter and followed it to the letter, but my first few loaves were total failures,” Kathy admits. “So I went to the internet and started looking at what other people were doing, and eventually I found a recipe that worked for me. That’s the one I’ve been using to this day.”

Having finally found a sourdough recipe which worked for her, Kathy was now free to start experimenting with ingredients, and it was here that the first seeds of her business were planted.

“My family enjoyed my baking, but there’s only so much bread one family can eat at a time, so I was taking my test loaves to work and sharing them with my coworkers,” Kathy says. “People started telling me ‘this is delicious; I’d pay you for this,’ and everything just started spiralling from there.”

Now, in 2025, Kathy has her own thriving business selling all manners of bread, from sourdough to sweet breads to bagels and everything in between. She also sells other items at her booth at the Blue Earth farmer’s market, where her breads are sold alongside homemade canned goods such as salsa, jam, jelly, and pickles.

“I have a very consistent customer base, and I like selling at the farmer’s market because I usually sell out by the end of the day,” Kathy says. “There have only been two occasions when I didn’t sell out, and those were both during the back-to-school season, when people were busy and the kids were all back in school.”

Kathy’s breads run the gambit from savory to sweet, and customer suggestions are not only welcome, but occasionally lead to improvements in recipes which then become permanent additions to the recipe for future batches.

“When I was first brainstorming my pizza loaf, it only contained the pizza seasonings and nothing else,” Kathy recalls. “Then one day I had a customer ask ‘hey, can you add some cheese to the pizza loaf for my order?’ and I thought that was a great idea. Now, the pizza loaf recipe includes both parmesan and mozzarella cheese, and many of my customers love it.”

Currently, Kathy offers 32 different types of bread on her menu, with loaves ranging in price based on ingredients. Small loaves run from six to eight dollars, while larger loaves cost anywhere from ten to twelve dollars.

“Some of my most popular sellers include the garlic asiago sourdough loaf and my cranberry sweet loaf,” Kathy says. “Among my non-bread offerings, my canned salsa always sells well at the farmer’s market, and my pickled asparagus is always really popular whenever I can source the asparagus to make it.”

When asked if there were any unpopular flavors, Kathy admits that there weren’t many on her current set.

“I’m not a huge fan of the pesto loaf that I make, and it doesn’t sell particularly well,” Kathy says. “I once made a blue cheese loaf as an experiment because I love blue cheese, and my family liked it okay, but I don’t think that one would sell.”

Currently, Kathy uses Facebook as her primary marketplace for taking orders, under the business name Cookies, Bars, & Jars. There, she posts photos of her latest baking experiments, takes orders from across the Blue Earth community, and promotes her business to new customers.

“I’m lucky to have a very dedicated group of loyal customers, but I would like the business to expand a little more,” Kathy says. “My only worry is that, if I start advertising more, this business will grow too big too quickly, and I’ll need to hire more people to be able to keep up. Ultimately, I don’t want this business to expand beyond what I can do alone, and I don’t want being a business to overwhelm what started as a hobby that I genuinely enjoy.”

As the name might suggest, Kathy’s first baking love was not in fact bread, but cookies and bars. While she would enjoy selling these alongside her other products, she acknowledges that baking bread full-time takes up most of her valuable oven space.

“I originally started my foray into the baking world with cookies, specifically looking for a chocolate chip cookie recipe for my husband,” Kathy explains. “Unfortunately, my oven is usually full of bread these days. My current oven can fit four loaves at a time, and I usually use the extra space to squeeze in a batch of bagels. Cookies would just take too long with my current setup.”

Given that this hobby has become a business for Kathy, there has been a lot of experimentation and learning that has gone into the process of perfecting every loaf that leaves her kitchen. However, that has also led to a lot of interesting, unique, and ultimately delicious discoveries that continue to influence Kathy’s baking journey.

“A lot of the fun of baking is that you really do have to experiment and do it all yourself,” Kathy says. “Contrary to popular belief, you can’t learn everything from the internet. Sometimes you just have to get your hands dirty and try something new. Sometimes it fails, and sometimes you end up with a new favorite recipe that you can keep making for years.”

Kathy also takes a lot of pride in making every single loaf from scratch, ensuring that each loaf is wholly unique.

“Would it be faster and easier for me to make certain types of bread in larger batches? Yes, probably,” Kathy admits. “But I like to make every loaf from scratch. Not only does it allow me to completely customize everything I make, but it also gives me more hands-on experience working with that particular recipe. Every loaf is slightly different and presents its own challenges, and that’s a great learning experience.”

Ultimately for Kathy, baking bread isn’t just a hobby, or even a business – it’s an art form unto itself.

“I’m really not an artistic person,” Kathy comments. “I can’t draw or paint or sculpt or anything like that. The most I do is cake decorating, and even then I need a reference. There are a lot of exceptionally talented bakers out there on the internet who make absolute masterpieces out of bread, and that’s something I can’t do. The reason I love working with sourdough in particular is that the finished product looking rustic and rough is part of the appeal. I can’t bake a pretty loaf, but it’ll always taste good, and that’s ultimately what matters.”