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Dee Martin—Mama Dee to her friends—had a revelation one day as she was driving home from her work as a banquet chef at the Santa Cruz Beach Boardwalk: “I thought cinnamon rolls. Everybody loves cinnamon rolls.” Last July, she turned that thought into reality, opening Fire and Flour Bakehouse.
“I had been thinking for years of doing a little cottage bakery,” Martin said. “There are so many good bakers out there, and everybody nailed the sourdough lane. Cinnamon rolls have an emotional appeal. They had that little bit of glee that I was looking for.”
Martin began her culinary career as an 18-year-old food runner at Harrah’s Casino in Lake Tahoe, her first job away from home and fresh out of high school.
“Harrah’s was the only five-star, five-diamond in all of Nevada,” she said. “After a while, I became a prep cook, and just kind of learned there. And I guess maybe I started getting my thicker skin then because it was not easy. But I swore it off at least twice; ‘I’m done.’”
Her career change led her to earn a degree in environmental studies and economics, and Martin worked as a transportation planner for five years. In what she described as “a very expensive lesson,” given her student debt, she discovered, she said, that office work was not for her.
“I would be working on big projects,” she said, “I’d just be sort of daydreaming of, like, what would I see on the Emeril Lagasse cooking show. It was love-hate: cooking is a very hard, thankless industry that doesn’t pay well. We all prove our work with our scars and burns and little cuts.”
Martin enrolled in culinary school as a refresher, she said, to learn “little tidbits and little shortcuts,” formalizing her training so she could take on more extensive kitchen work. As a freelance chef in Silicon Valley, Martin worked in over a hundred different kitchens, by her own count, and tried to take some professional knowledge or expertise from each.
“Some places flowed really well,” she said, “and some felt chaotic. Some days my only thought was, ‘I never want to run a kitchen like that.’ I’d say only four or five times I would walk out feeling like I didn’t learn something that day.”
Once Martin began working in her home bakery, however, she discovered she had a lot to learn about the complications of not having the same equipment and ovens to lean on as she had used professionally.
“It was a little bit of a curve,” she said. “It is a lot harder to make large commercial quantities in a home kitchen. That oven gets pretty loaded, and my cinnamon rolls take so long to bake compared to a convection oven. It takes some time and some rotating.”
She also had to perfect the rolls themselves, a baked item she had never really worked with before.
“People were kind of teasing me, asking if I had ever made cinnamon rolls,” Martin said. “I’d say, ‘Yeah, once or twice, but you know, how hard can it be, right?’ Well, I was very humbled, and it took me about two months to really figure out how to make a commercial-sized product.”
After almost giving up several times, months went by before she came up with a foolproof recipe she was happy with, reworking it a dozen times.
“I wrote it down, and I’m never changing anything,” she said. “As a chef, you’re used to just throwing things in the pot. Here I’m like down to the ground on everything.”
One of the joys of becoming a craft baker, Martin said, was in discovering and sourcing the finest and most diverse ingredients she could.
“This is curated,” Martin said, “I don’t want just any cardamom. I want really good cardamom. I went into a store and asked, ‘What kinds of cinnamon do you have?’ And they laughed at me and said, ‘We have cinnamon.’ Well, I’ve got seven kinds of cinnamon right here in my kitchen.”
Beyond ingredient quality, Martin is dedicated to providing exceptional customer value in her products.
“I envisioned that from the get-go,” she said. “I know times are tough for everybody economically. So I wanted to give something that conveyed value. Obviously, that means size, but also the attention to detail you won’t find in a supermarket cinnamon roll.”
This extends to the frosting on the rolls, which Martin applies very liberally.
“I know not everybody likes a lot,” she said, “But they can always scrape it off. If there is not enough, then that’s just wrong. Why would you pay for a cinnamon roll that does not have enough frosting on it? It just doesn’t make sense.”
With the rolls down to a science, Martin expanded her product line to include focaccia, including Parmesan herb, jalapeño cheddar, and sun-dried tomato-garlic versions, and artisan sandwich rolls.
“I wanted to make my way into savory breads,” she said, “I feel like focaccia is one of the best. Who doesn’t like focaccia bread? If they don’t, you should run.”
The artisan rolls are a prelude to her next venture: smoking and grilling meats for sandwiches served on her line of artisan rolls.
“This is my stepping stone,” Martin said. “I’m a good caterer. I make great sandwiches. That’s kind of like a ledge to get onto. After making the cinnamon rolls and the breads, it’s more of a segue than just coming out of the blue.”
Martin has just debuted online ordering with a pantry pickup service at her home. Fire and Flour will also take part in the Hollister Downtown Association’s Food Truck Tuesdays, starting Oct. 27.
“I’m getting such a passion for the actual craft,” Martin said, “I am really excited about how things are going, and I’m happy to be getting out there in front of people on Food Truck Tuesdays. It’s a great opportunity to sell and let everybody know where they can find me.”
Selected Fire and Flour cinnamon rolls
Biscoff – “It’s like cinnamon cookie dough. It looks and tastes like a cinnamon cookie. It’s got a very caramelly flavor, and I put Biscoff in the icing, then crumble a cookie on top and add a whole cookie on top of that.”
Cookie Monster – “It was supposed to be like Cookie Monster, but it’s really more of an Oreo cookie roll. It has crushed Oreos on top and in the filling as well; basically, it has the equivalent of three whole Oreo cookies. The filling is cinnamon sugar, which makes it like a chocolate paste inside. If I’m nibbling, this will be one of my favorites to nibble on.”
Maple Bourbon Bacon – “My bestseller next to the classic. It has two kinds of bacon, and then I put bacon on top, and bits and pieces inside, with maple frosting and aged bourbon syrup. Then I thought, ‘How can I go more eccentric?’ So I put some crystallized maple sugar on top, just to pick up on a strong maple flavor.”
Salted Caramel Apple – “This is one of my favorites because I really like the dough itself. The apples have a little char on them, a little bit of the signature fire-and-flour flavor. They have fresh apples, caramel syrup instead of frosting, and a pretty good amount of salt, which balances out the sweetness of the caramel.”
S’mores Rolls – “There are chocolate and graham cracker and marshmallows in the roll itself. It’s kind of interesting because most of the time the marshmallows melt out and make a little extra caramelly layer on the bottom. A ‘goo’ layer. Then they have marshmallow fluff on top, mini marshmallows, Hershey’s, and then they get a little flame to toast them.”
Fire and Flour Bakehouse is on Facebook, and the full product line is available online. The Hollister Downtown Association’s Food Truck Tuesdays are held from 4-7 p.m. on San Benito Street.
Recommendations for future Eat, Drink, Savor articles can be emailed to roberteliason@benitolink.com.
BenitoLink thanks our underwriters, Hollister Super and Windmill Market, for helping expand the Eat, Drink, Savor series and for giving our readers the stories that interest them. Hollister Super (two stores in Hollister) and Windmill Market (in San Juan Bautista) support reporting on the inspired and creative people behind the many delicious food and drink products made in San Benito County. All editorial decisions are made by BenitoLink.
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