to-order cakes and seasonal baked goods. How long have you been baking?
Kathy has been baking professionally for the past ten years. How did you begin ...
Vendor: Backwoods Bakery and Cakeworks- Kathy & Keith Cirka Contact:
[email protected]., 828-554-5721 or on Facebook at TheBackwoodsBakeryandCakeworks Product: Sandwich breads, cookies, crackers, croutons, stuffing mix, sweet rolls, pizza dough, dog treats, madeto-order cakes and seasonal baked goods. How long have you been baking? Kathy has been baking professionally for the past ten years. How did you begin baking? Kathy started seriously baking from home when she and Keith lived in Jacksonville, North Carolina. Since she homeschooled their children, baking was part of the curriculum. It was also a community outreach in that she helped wives of service men at Camp LeJeune bake cookies for care packages. Soon people began asking her to bake cakes for special occasions and the business grew from there. Keith shares a love of baking. His father regularly baked bread for the family, which is a tradition Keith enjoys perpetuating at home and through the bakery. Kathy has primarily run her own baking business. When she and Keith moved to Sylva, where Keith grew-up and still has family, she worked one year at Annie’s Bakery before initiating her own Backwoods Bakery and Cakeworks. How long have you had a booth at the Jackson County Farmer’s Market? Since June, 2013. What do you enjoy about the Market? Kathy and Keith enjoy the sense of community at the Market. They’ve developed friendships with customers and other vendors and appreciate the convenient access to products and produce for their own home and kitchen. What is something unique about your baked goods that customers may like to know? All of Backwoods Bakery breads, crackers and flat breads are made with Carolina Ground flour, a wholesale company in Asheville that mills and sells organic flour grown in the Carolinas. Kathy and Keith are dedicated to using local ingredients as much as possible. After trying several commercial flours, they found Carolina Ground created the desired qualities in their baked goods. Because the wheat is grown on small-scale farms, the dynamics and qualities of each harvest differ slightly depending on the natural variances of each growing season (i.e., rainfall, temperature, etc.). This dynamic is part of the attraction in the Cirka’s decision to use local wheat. The final product will always be delicious, but the process of getting there (i.e., how much moisture to add to the dough, kneading time required) demands Kathy and Keith’s attention to and appreciation of the unique qualities of that season’s wheat crop. The Cirka’s currently use a third-party commercial kitchen for making their baked goods, which come from recipes both new and passed-down from family. Plans are in the works, however, to build a commercial kitchen on their home property to stream-line the baking process. Gastronomic suggestion: While at the Market, pick-up some Backwoods biscuits, thick un-cured bacon, a dozen eggs and some honey or jam. Then meander to a downtown café for a bag of locally roasted beans. Head home to make yourself a warm Backwoods bacon-n- egg biscuit with a slather of honey or seasonal jam. Take a tall drink of hot coffee and smile knowing your day is off to a fine start.
