BRENTWOOD, Tenn. (WTVF) — A Brentwood woman discovered a talent only a few years ago, and she's now in the running for a big award.
"This is just part of prep, and I get my baskets all ready to go," Michaella Zetts said, covering small baskets in cloths. "There's always something to do over here!"
Living on the bread schedule, there are specific steps for each day of the week Michaella handles for her Sourdoughs of Somerset business. It operates out of her Brentwood home.
"Smells good, huh?" she smiled, chopping up some ingredients. "It's the rosemary parmesan."
What Michaella does with sourdough bread is art.
"It keeps me from doing laundry, that's for sure!" she laughed.
The designs on the bread include holiday celebrations. People propose with ring designs on the bread. Whether someone wants their bread with a kangaroo, a lobster, the Eiffel Tower, anything, Michaella says game on.
"I do like the Louis Vuitton [bread design] cause I personally can't afford one," she laughed.
She's only been doing this a few years. Her husband was working as the executive chef at the Optimist restaurant in Germantown when the tornadoes hit in March 2020.
"They were about to reopen and then COVID hit," Michaella continued. "They were shut down for six weeks."
Michaella and her husband got creative in that time. They began preparing meals from their home.
"I called it the McBrentwood drive-thru, and we had servers and cooks out of work," she remembered. "We were making meals for about six weeks. Our last day, we served 330 people in 25 minutes."
She'd only been making bread a few weeks before this happened. 2020 secured a talent she didn't know she had.
Michaella is now a contestant in the online 2023 Greatest Baker competition, featuring bakers across the country. It's an online vote with the winner taking $10,000 and a feature in Bake From Scratch Magazine.
Now producing 400-500 loaves of bread a week and in the running for this online competition, this is such an unexpected surprise for Michaella.
"This whole sourdough journey has just taught me that, I mean, you can do anything you want, really, if you put your mind to it and you have passion," she said.
If you'd like to vote for Michaella in the Greatest Baker competition, you can find that link here.
The competition goes to benefit the Andrew McDonough Be Positive Foundation, giving financial assistance to families of children living with cancer.
Fostering Hope provides Christmas for kids in foster care. I'm delighted to see Fostering Hope expand this year to expand their reach to now include kids in Foster care in metro AND foster kids in East TN hard hit by Helene.
-Bree Smith
