Kelly's French Bakery started as a dream in my youth. I always thought I would have a bakery when I grew up. I pictured myself with a playpen full of children happily playing while I baked a few delicious cakes and muffins. My customers would talk to me while I worked, holding their warm cups of coffee. It was certainly was a dream. First I went to France and worked with 36 men in a bakery in Paris. The bakery was called Maison Feyeux. It was in the 9th arrondissement and was owned by Jean Claude Poilpre. I was the only woman and certainly the only American working in the bakery, or as they call it the laboratoire. I became friendly with an number of the bakers and spent glorious weekends touring the countryside eating food I had never tasted and speaking in a language that taxed every brain cell I had. I loved every minute of living in Paris and hoped that someday I would return to my own pied a terre.

My chef was a man named Christian Voiriot and I respected him so much. He was insanely kind to me and showed me so many things in the bakery, things that I still use today. Christian now owns his own bakery in the 13th arrondissement. It is a small bakery filled with the wonderful results of his baking talents. I opened Kelly's in April on 1981, I was twenty-two years old. I was full of excitement. The sun could never set on my dreams. I was so tired at the end of everyday and so happy to start another. When I had a day off I would drive to San Francisco and visit other bakeries. I would scour books for ideas and recipes. It was the 80's and it was all happening. The food scene was thriving in the Bay Area. Alice Waters of Chez Panisse, was changing the notion of dining out and eating in California. I was so busy baking and growing as a business and a bakery that I didn't even realize I was part of this change.

Mark decided to try to get a job at Chez Panisse. He was hired and that started an exploration of food and culture we were both only too excited to be apart of. We began eating and preparing food as neither of us had ever done before. We were searching for ingredients and making demands of our purveyors. Every Sunday night Mark and I would cook dinner for a group of our friends after long exhausting bicycle rides. We would slow roast pork shoulders and make gnocchi. I would make pear ice cream or oeufs a la niege. We were young and our desires were on fire. In 1987 Mark moved back to Santa Cruz and we opened a bakery in Aptos. We intended to make this a bread bakery. It soon became a hopping retail bakery selling mountains of morning buns, bread and cakes. The Aptos bakery grew too small and we opened another production only facility in Watsonville. Mark took the bread bakery to a whole other level. We started selling wholesale and were soon selling to large grocery store chains and restaurants.

In 2000 we purchased a building on the Westside of Santa Cruz. We had been looking for a building for sometime. We had always wanted a permanent home. Moving the ovens and the silo were like moving a small house. We certainly didn't want to do it more than once, The building had been an old vegetable packing shed and was inhabited by a mish-mash of tenants who were making surfboards and wine. We bought it mainly because it had the potential of having a courtyard. The building was shaped like a "U" and this suited the courtyard idea splendidly. Ever since the earthquake in 1989 took away the "Courtyard Commons" we had been trying to recreate it. Three years later and avalanches of joys and headaches we opened the new Westside Kelly's French Bakery. We all crossed our fingers. It was a new location. No other retail businesses were nearby. Our parents were terrified for us. But, the people came and bought our food and coffee. We were elated!

Now this is our only location. We are so happy. The courtyard fills up with friends and customers every warm day and on the cold days people huddle inside. We have a bevy of various businesses and offices that support the building and the courtyard. We call it the Swift Street Courtyard. It is filled with people coming and going, a real community center. The playpen idea was a bit crazy as was the relaxed image of chatting with my customers while I baked a few pretty items each morning. I guess if growing up is having a job that you dreamed of a long time ago than I have grown up. I don't put the whites on everyday like I use to, but I can't go too many days without making a new product or changing the decoration on a cake. I love what I do and feel so proud of all the people and experiences that have crossed my path through the years. It is all part of the ongoing fabric of the art project I call my life.