Before pop-ups were called pop-ups, Meg Ray sold her baked goods at the Berkeley Farmers’ Market. After a couple of years, Ray got into the San Francisco Farmers Market before moving to the more glamorous locale at the Ferry Building. “That’s essentially how I got into the Ferry Building,” Ray said. “They took vendors from the Green Street Farmers Market to be anchor tenants there.” She considers that first store to be her big break. After Miette moved in, Ray went from baking 20 cakes a week to baking 500. It was a game changer. “You learn about equipment. You really learn about baking at that point,” she said. Nearly two decades later, her fourth Miette store just opened in Montclair Village.
My first taste of Miette—named for the texture and particular quality of bread or cake crumb—was at the Ferry Building. I used to meet a friend of mine for lunch there. The highlight of the visit was a stop in the dessert line at Miette. I’d bring home a small bag of shortbread cookies and swoon over a delectable chocolate pot de creme, always topped with a frothy white layer of whipped cream. But Ray has a particularly magical way of making cakes. I’ve never tasted a dry morsel of cake from Miette.
Ray recalls growing up with American cookbooks and birthday cakes. “That felt very much like the aesthetic standard,” she said. Then, in high school, she went to France with her father and fell in love with their “gorgeous creations” and pastries. But she still preferred American cakes. “My menu is essentially a hybrid, the best of both worlds,” she said.
Before opening in Montclair, Miette had a small storefront and larger production facility in Jack London Square. Ray moved into the area based on the promise, or premise, that a Market Hall would open there. After years of delays and no Market Hall, Miette never became a go-to neighborhood bakery. “When we saw that there was an opportunity in Montclair, we grabbed it,” she said. “We’ve been so welcomed by the community—but the kitchen’s too small for us.” Cookie production is taking place downtown, at Firebrand Artisan Breads. However, Miette is also currently in the process of purchasing a new baking facility near Oakland’s Chinatown. If that goes through, they’ll move the heavy production there. “We’re over-exerting the Montclair space,” she said.
Miette has never sold bread at the Ferry Building. “We’re surrounded by so many other vendors who offer bread, sandwiches and coffee there,” Ray said. But Montclair presents a different opportunity. The community is asking for bread and sandwiches. “We’re hoping to start making bread in the next month,” she said. “At that location, we will have croissants and other morning pastries.”
As Miette expanded over the years, I worried it would go the way of La Boulangerie, the San Francisco bakery that lost the ability, or interest, to maintain quality control over its products. None of La Boulangerie’s pastries were recognizable after it partnered with, or was consumed by, Starbucks. But after more than 20 years in the kitchen, Ray says she continues to stop herself and think, “Why are we doing it this way?” She still feels she has some innovative ideas to implement. To make the transition from being a home baker to a production baker, one has to consider efficiencies. “I love to bake, for sure. But what I like better is to run a production plant,” she said.
In fact, the day I spoke with Ray she’d come up with a new approach to making “financiers,” small French almond cakes. She wasn’t happy with the way the batter was baking. “Then I was looking at this silicon, silpat mold,” Ray said. She had an “aha” moment and found a pair of scissors. “I started cutting out strips of eight and said, ‘This is how we’re going to do this now.’” That inventive approach saved her bakers at least a half-hour of preparation time. “I did the same thing with the madeleines. Two products now take literally three minutes to prep,” she said. “Now we can have more little things in Montclair, which people want.”
