Sonoma baker Michelle Finn turned sour times into sourdough

Making sourdough feeds Michelle Finn’s soul.

Eating the bread Finn bakes makes her Sonoma Valley customers smile. It’s a circle of happiness.

The uplifting circumstance sprang from dark days. Life soured for Finn four years ago when her older brother, her personal hero, took his own life. Grief stricken, Finn kneaded her way through her torment, learning everything there was to know about making the crusty bread.

Her knowledge became a gift when weeks into the coronavirus crisis she lost her job as a digital marketing manager. “I was unemployed for the first time in my life,” she said about being laid off from the radio company that was suffering from lack of ad sales. With nothing but time while sheltering in place and no job, she morphed making bread for family and friends into a livelihood, launching Sonoma Sourdough with a social media page and a website.

She got a home kitchen license and now makes what she calls “sloppy sourdoughs” three days a week, sometimes four. She produces 18 loaves a day and sometimes goes up to 24. Her specialty is her flavor creation add-ins – blueberry and blue cheese, Parmesan and onion, roasted bell pepper with marinated mozzarella, pesto and sundried tomato. When a friend shared pears with Finn she found a delicious way to use them in her sourdough.

“It gave me a sense of control to learn to do something that is hard to do,” she said of her first foray in the craft. “It was like creating life out of loss. Sourdough is a living thing. You have to keep the starter alive by feeding it,” she said. “You’re not the boss of it. It’s the boss of you.”

She explained that it is nothing at all like making a loaf of plain white bread. “It’s hard. It took years for me to be able to consistently make sourdough that people enjoy. There’s something basic and beautiful about sharing bread.”

Prior to her last position Finn, 59, worked for many years in advertising sales management for two different media companies. “I’ve always loved the newspaper industry,” said Finn, who sold ads for the Index-Tribune for several years. “Newspapers are magical to me.”

But her new career as a sourdough baker brings a new sense of joy and personal accomplishment. “I love it,” she said.

Her home kitchen has double ovens and she bakes her sourdough in Fourneau cast iron pots that cost $300. She can bake three loaves at a time. “Sourdough needs super high heat,” she said. “It takes an hour just to preheat the ovens to 500 degrees.”

Finn describes herself as being “super shy” and she loves marketing through social media because she can communicate without having to meet people in person. “One person tells another person and the business is growing,” she said. “This could only happen in a wonderful town like Sonoma.”

She and her husband have lived in the Valley of the Moon for 24 years. Their children are adults and she is a proud grandmother. Finn cherishes the love and stability of her family, as her own childhood was far from cheerful. Her mother struggled with drugs and alcohol and dropped Finn off at a police station when she was 5. She lived in foster homes until she was 12 and able to move in with her much older sister.

Now she enjoys being able to work from home for the first time. She is up at 4 a.m. and tries to finish up by 2 p.m. At first she delivered her loaves, but now customers pick them up at her door, a totally contact-free process.

She uses unbleached organic flour she gets from Central Milling in Petaluma. Except for her ever-changing add-ins, the only ingredients are flour, spring water and “plain old salt.”

She admits that, at this point, there is “not a lot of profit. But she hopes that will change over time.

“Right now making money is not my main motivation. It is just time for me to be doing something I love on my own schedule.”

She loves making sourdough and Sonomans love eating it. It’s the right time for the dream job.

Order bread on Tuesdays on Facebook at Sonoma Sourdough.