Cheryl Day - Back in the Day Bakery Made with Love: More Than 100 Recipes and Make-It-Yourself Projects to Create and Share

Cheryl Day & Griffith Day

New York

His brilliant guidance, kindness, and admiration for what we do will always be in our hearts.

My husband, Griff, and I bake with love. We own and operate Back in the Day Bakery, in Savannah, Georgia. Its a place where we make Southern American comfort food from time-honored recipeswe strive to create the food folks crave every day.

Running a small bakery and making everything by hand requires personal care and attention to detail, in contrast to the large corporate grocery brands where the baked goods come off a truck with sell-by dates stamped on the packages. Making everything ourselves allows us to be creative with the flavors of the seasons and keeps our menu fresh and new. And baking from scratch gives us an incredible feeling of pride in our craft.

When we opened the bakery in 2002, we set out to create a gathering place that exuded community, comfort, and the love we have for our customers. Being in the food industry is hard work, but its a great life that gives us a tremendous amount of joy. Food naturally brings people together, and not only do we get to make handcrafted food the old-fashioned way, we get to make new friends every day.

Our bakery has become a beloved neighborhood favorite and a local hangout. Griff and I have made many genuine connections there and nurtured long-lasting friendships over the years. Some children have literally grown up visiting the bakery, and sometimes they even bring me finger paintings that they made in schoolI am always honored that they want to share something handmade of their own with me.

And our customers give us the nicest compliments. One day, one of our favorite regulars came into the bakery to buy a box of brownies, cookies, cupcakes, and breakfast pastries and said, Cheryl, you and Griff have really found your place in the world! I have never forgotten her words. What she was talking about was not just the fact that we make delicious food, but also the feeling you get when you visit the bakery. We are thankful to have created a gathering place that allows our guests to enjoy what we do daily and to provide an uplifting experience for them too.

Neither Griff nor I started in the food world, but food always made us happy. I learned to bake with my grandmother in Alabama, and her recipes are among my most treasured heirlooms. Its such simple memories of food that connect us to everything that we do.

Griff often says to me, Why didnt I just go into food from the beginning? Its funny how life choices can take you in different directions but then bring you to exactly where you should be. In the end, the road traveled makes you more seasoned, and it gives you a greater appreciation once you have realized your goals.

The aim of our bakery is to source the best ingredients, and purchasing local, seasonal ingredients is the key to our food. In fact, both Griff and I were inspired from a very young age to live this way. Both of my parents worked full-time, but somehow they managed to prepare a home-cooked meal almost every night that always included fresh vegetables and other seasonal dishes. They planned ahead and made it a family affair.

It is no secret that my mom gets the credit for giving me the soul of Southern hospitality, and my dad, with his larger-than-life personality, for showing me how to walk into a room and make connections with people in an instant. I often joke with my friends that my mother was the head of the backyard to table movement in our family. When I was growing up in Los Angeles, we had a small garden for the best salad fixings and both a Meyer lemon tree and a plum tree, whose fruit always made their way into pies. My parents also belonged to a food co-op, where we would get big boxes of fresh produce from local farms.

And my dad went to the market every single day. I wish I had realized way back then how much he was teaching me about the benefits of eating seasonally, with the freshest ingredients possible. Even in our hurry-up world, I still think handmade is always betterwhether its what you eat for breakfast or the snack you serve your kids after schoolbecause it allows you to have complete control over your ingredients. I also believe that anything that gets families sitting around the table together again is so much more fulfilling.

In Minneapolis, Griffs mom and dad were the type of people who worked with their hands. Griff tells me stories about his moms green thumbshe was the one who could bring an African violet back to life, and she filled her yard with flowers and greenery. Virginia, better known as Ginny, was a stay-at-home mom who loved to experiment with recipes and bring her own creations to the table. Griff admired her artistic abilities for sewing and flower arranging and her passion for politics (she was a proud member of the League of Women Voters). And she always had a craft project in the works.

Griffs dad was the guy who worked hard each day to support his family but made an occasional foray into brewing his own beer and enjoyed smoking chickens for his friends. Griff remembers going to the neighborhood butcher with his dad and being able to taste the different varieties of cured meats, from slices of salami to bologna, so he could make his version of a towering Dagwood sandwich to enjoy while watching his favorite Saturday morning TV shows. That experience was the inspiration for some of the sandwiches we serve at the bakery today.

People often ask me what its like to be in business with my husband. I consider myself a lucky girl to be able to work with someone who inspires me every day, but we dont always agree on everything. We have found that its best to define our own roles clearly: Griff is the master of everything at the bakery. He crafts our savory and sweet menus, guides our business with wisdom, and makes sure that we never rest on our laurels. He moves our business forward and always has a plan for how to do so. Im all about the fine details of our craft and adding the handmade touches that define the experience of the bakery. I give Griff all the praise for giving me the courage to do what I love every day. We truly are a sweet-and-savory tour de force!

In our first cookbook, The Back in the Day Bakery Cookbook, we shared treasured family recipes along with our customers favorite treats and our method-to-the-magic baking tips. In this book, youll learn about how we live a handmade life. We share more of our most popular recipes, along with creative details that make our baking not only delicious but fun too. Youll find many food how-tos, including how to build sandwich cookies, how to roll out a piecrust, how to make flavored syrups for your morning pancakes, and more. We give step-by-step techniques for baking our Ciabatta Rolls (see ), all just the way we do at the bakery. Paying attention to such creative details makes a party or even a simple meal at home feel special.