Journal: People & Places

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By Caroline Bontia

With all the sourdough bread baking that's taken over our social feeds during quarantine, the baking champion that's quickly rising to the top and has captured our attention and appetites in town, is none other than Healdsburg local and winner of Food Network's 2019 Holiday Baking Championship, Melissa Yanc. Yanc and her partner Sean McGaughey, a sous chef at SingleThread, is the husband and wife team behind Quail & Condor. McGaughey suggested the name of their business in homage of two California birds, and it stuck. The couple is busy as ever raising their young family, baking up a daily storm, selling at farmer's markets -- while also navigating plans on how to open their brick and mortar store that's been delayed by COVID-19, that will be shared with Black Oak Cafe, near Wild Flowers in downtown.

We're excited to share our Q&A with Yanc, below. As an only child, Yanc's father is from Turkey, and her mother is from the Philippines. Her grandmother, was the owner of a bakery in Cebu, and Yanc who lived in the Philippines for three years, from 5 to 8 years old, credits her grandmother for sparking her baking interest. 

1) Please share a bit about yourself, how you discovered your passion for baking?

My grandmother was a professional baker and started cake decorating with me when I was 8 years old. I continued to dabble throughout high school and in my first year of college my parents helped me realize that I should be in pastry school and do it professionally. I eventually opened my first bakery in Denver 4 years after graduation pastry school focusing on croissants and pastries, not much bread. Then worked in New York and learned all about sourdough bread baking, it was there I realized how much I enjoyed making naturally leavened doughs. Working at SingleThread and being with Sean helped me to modernize how we do things as well. 

2) With a highly anticipated bakery that you're working to open up — how has putting a pause on that project — while still being very active in your business been for your schedule and family life?

Honestly a pause was a blessing in disguise, Sean and I have each owned our own food businesses in the past, can certainly roll our sleeves up and muscle out work but with 2 kids it was a huge wake up call. During this time in pandemic, we are learning what our realistic needs are for the brick & mortar, like employees and production schedule. And of course we are taking the extra time to bond with our growing family. 

3) What have you observed about this community during this time? What’s been the most popular orders?

We are so blown away by the support of the community. Everyone just wants us to open. Despite the restrictions, no one seemed to be shy about our porch pick-ups and now with attending the farmers markets. The most popular during the porch pick ups were bagels, now at the farmers market we’ve seen a huge increase on the breads more notably so: the Danish rye. 

4) Creatively what are you gravitating towards with your baking and cooking?

We want to touch most on what people are most familiar with but do it the absolute best and modernize it. We cook and bake for ourselves so if it reminds us of coming home after school and eating mom’s fresh baked cookies or coffee cake from grandma then we know we’ve hit your “nostalgia nerve”.  Plus it’s a great platform to use what’s growing around us, even at higher cost. 

As for the bread we aim to challenge the customers to try something new. For example : Everyone associates rye with caraway which we know is a strong flavor but rye actually brings a beautiful crumb and earthy taste to the bread. We don’t just make one dough and put different inclusions, we make each dough a separate blend of flours that come from different places and organically grown, of course. 

5) What does a perfect day off, look like for you?

We enjoy time as a family even if it’s just putzing around town. Sean takes a long bike ride, I turn on the hose at home and we turn our deck into a playground while drink beer, wine and juice boxes :)