As the saying goes, "Inspiration exists, but it has to find you working." For Taissa Rebroff of Winter Park's Buttermilk Bakery, the muse reveals itself every time she steps into Redlight Redlight, Lineage Coffee Roasting, or the Audubon Park Community Market. Those local successes, she says, "started small, then consciously took their time to grow all the while maintaining quality and consistency throughout." That ethos pervades the boutique boulangerie she runs with her brothers Phil and Alex and her mother Lana, and it's a quality patrons of Buttermilk Bakery take notice of.
"This community of local doers does a great job of showing people that there's more out there than franchises and grocery stores," says Rebroff. "Customers seek local because the quality is obvious, and there's a real desire to support businesses for the passion they have for their craft, rather than businesses whose sole desire is to make more money." While in New York pursuing a writing career, Taissa took a job at a Brooklyn bakery and got the idea of opening a similar operation with her family, who were living in South Florida at the time. But a bakery in South Florida was never an option – "we never felt a connection to South Florida," she says. Having attended UCF, she got a sense of Orlando's receptive food community and knew a bakery would make sense here.
"We love this about Orlando – everyone seems to have the same goal of supporting each other," she says, "and our goal is to produce the absolute best we can, and to share new ideas and flavors." I think Buttermilk's patronage would consider those goals accomplished. —FK
Buttermilk Bakery
1198 Orange Ave., Winter Park
321-422-4015
buttermilk-bakery.com
