Kaila Rabinovich never expected her love for baking sourdough to become a neighborhood sensation, but years after nurturing her first sourdough starter the Cedarhurst resident now supplies fresh artisan loaves to Five Towns residents every week.
What started as a way to feed her artistic side and serve as a creative outlet while pregnant, has transformed into “Baked on Spruce”, a small business that Rabinovich runs from her home kitchen, on Spruce Street.
Her sister Sara Cinamon kept telling her to start selling the loaves since she was already making some for friends and family.
“I started selling to friends and family at first,” Rabinovich said. “Then so many people started reaching out and it grew.”
Though she has only been in business for two months, she already has a long list of customers and lots of followers on her Instagram: BakedonSpruce.
She charges $15 for regular loaves and $18 for specialty ones that have inclusions.
“My biggest limiting thing right now is that I can’t take too many orders,” she added. “Because you bake each loaf in a Dutch oven pot, I can only take up to 12 orders per week.”
Her process starts on Wednesday when she feeds her starter, which consists of flour and water that ferments. Then, on Thursday morning she feeds the dough, mixes it, lets it sit, folds it and repeats this multiple times.
“It’s funny because sourdough is very artisanal and that’s how bread was made in the olden day,” Rabinovich said.
Cinamon said that her sister needed someone to push her to open the small business and sell her sourdough.
“She’s such an amazing baker and cook that I knew she’d be super successful and really enjoy it, so once she mentioned it I just kept going with it,” Cinamon wrote in a text. “I harassed her a million texts with terrible ideas for a name, and with enough excitement she actually did it. She made the Instagram account and got a bunch of orders right away!”
She is supporting Rabinovich by telling everyone she knows to follow the Instagram account and encouraging her sister to try new things.
“With all things that she has to do, I love that in her small way she’s giving some time to the things she wants to do,” Cinamon wrote. “She made this small dream of hers a reality and I’m so proud of her for doing it!”
One of her dedicated customers and close friend, Batya Schlossberg, has been sampling her baked goods for years and has been ordering every week for the past two months.
“I’ve been there through the whole process,” Schlossberg said. “I love tasting all her different varieties through trial and error. My favorite loaf is the seeded, it’s seeded and I hope she sells it soon.”
Schlossberg said that Rabinovich only uses clean ingredients and takes into consideration people’s food allergies and preferences.
“Her ingredients are extremely clean and she tries to use the best of the best,” she added. “It’s only five ingredients and she wants everyone to be healthy and live that lifestyle.”
