(light music)
- I think I'm happiest when I'm touching dough,
and when I'm baking bread.
Finding my passion in the form of making sourdough bread,
it kinda feels like falling in love.
I'm Marissa Buie, I live in Los Angeles, California.
My passion is sourdough bread baking and I'm following
my food dreams.
I knew I loved food, I just didn't know
that I wanted it to be my career or my path in life.
So I think, for a long time, I was just kind of floating
around the food space, you know,
doing a little bit of pastry,
doing a little bit of recipe development,
and it just felt more like a day job.
I felt okay about it, basically,
but I wasn't passionate about it,
I wasn't going to work and being like,
I want to make these products I'm making,
and then, when I made my first loaves of bread,
and I was like, aha, this is what I wanna be doing.
(gentle string music)
I think why sourdough totally hooked me
is because of its simplicity.
A croissant is beautiful because it has layers
of butter and sugar and you have to spend hours
putting it, you know, rolling it super thin,
and making it a certain shape,
but a loaf of bread is just flour, water, salt,
and your hands coming together to make a risen,
beautiful loaf of bread.
Even though it wasn't my job, I was like,
this is what I wanna be doing all the time.
It was something I was thinking about,
something I wanted to explore on my own time,
to make it better, to make a loaf that someone
would really enjoy or a specific loaf that someone
was looking for and craving,
because it's what their grandma used to make them
when they were a kid, and that's, it consumed my day,
in the best sort of way.
You know, I get in my head a lot,
and I have a lot of fears about should I quit my day job,
and go work at a bakery to gain the experience that I need?
There's a point where I'm making bread
every single day at my house,
and I'm like, what's next?
So I've turned my house into a bakery, to my wife's chagrin,
and I need an outlet where I can learn more
and even if it's a little scary or intimidating,
just dive right into bread.
And it's been awesome to learn so much from everyone here,
from all the producers here,
and all the other culinary people here.
I've learned so much, and I also learned
how to make bread here, so thank you all for eating
(group cheering) my bread,
and thank you, BuzzFeed, for the flour.
(group laughing) That's made so much
of this bread.
Recently, I took a bet on myself.
I quit my day job, I moved 30 miles north
and I got a full-time job at a bakery.
It was scary, because one, it's something new,
you know, I'm not a bread professional.
I'm going into a space where people have been working
in bread for years,
and they really know what they're doing.
So it's a little intimidating,
but I knew if I didn't go take this baker job
that I would be staying in a day job
that was relatively easy, comfortable,
fun, but I would always have,
in the back of my head, that I didn't go chase my dreams,
and I feel like one day, I'd look back,
when I was 40 or 50 or 70 or 80, and I'll say,
"Why didn't I go take that chance when I had it?"
when it was right there in front of me.
- [Producer] And you don't want that moment?
- Yeah, I don't want that moment to come.
I wanna say that, I wanna be able to say,
in five years, when I have this bakery space
that I'm hoping to have one day,
that I did go follow my dreams,
and I think this is the first step that I'm taking.
Happiness looks like being able to share
the bread that I make with other people,
watching those people share what they know with others.
My ultimate sourdough dream is to share my love
of bread with other people through a small,
intimate baking space, where I can make bread
and give it to people, and I can also teach people
how to make their own bread.
I think that's what's most thrilling
about sourdough to me, is that every time I bake bread,
and make the dough, it's different,
and I'm still enthralled by it.
It kinda feels like, it kinda feels like falling in love,
because you're obsessed with it,
you're thinking about it all the time,
and you wanna learn more about it, and it doesn't stop.
It hasn't stopped since, it's only been a couple years,
but I imagine it's not gonna stop.
Chasing my dreams feels like I got on a train
that is going really fast, and it's a little scary,
but I'm hanging on for dear life,
and I'm really excited for where it's gonna take me.
I had been held back by thinking, oh, you know,
I can't do that, I'm young, you know,
I don't have a lot of money,
or I don't have the resources to do that,
but you can make the business you wanna make
if you have the skills to do it,
and the creativity, and also, the passion,
because it's a lot of hard work.
So seeing other people chase their dreams
and make their passions a reality has allowed me
to feel like I can do that, too.
My name is Marissa Buie, my passion
is sourdough bread baking and I'm following my food dreams.
- [Man] Oh yes.
(gentle music)
(camera snapping)