Raised in Michigan, Hoogerhyde traces her food love to London, where she took post-college jobs, first in a pub, later in a restaurant. She made the move to S.F. in 1994, landed jobs at Gordon Biersch and as front-of-house manager at Slow Club. Hoogerhyde was Walker's assistant pastry chef at 42 Degrees. When the place tanked, Hoogerhyde and Walker launched their own business, baking sweets for the case at Bi-Rite Market, including cookies and the now-famous chocolate pot de crème. "We were renting kitchen space from another bakery," Hoogerhyde recalls. "After three years we were like, 'We just need to find our own home.'"
Ice cream was the last thing on their minds.
"We didn't want to do just a bakery because of Tartine on the corner," Hoogerhyde says. "No one was doing an organic ice cream, and Anne and I had done ice cream at the restaurant, so we thought, Why not. Never ever did we think it was going to be as popular as it is." And the salted caramel? Bi-Rite began with a core of 12 flavors. "We hade made a caramel ice cream before, but when we opened, salted caramel was becoming the rage with everything. We thought, 'Why not do it as ice cream?'"
Today, after a recent expansion that yielded a new ice cream-making room and larger baking facilities (a soft-serve sidewalk window, too), Hoogerhyde and Walker oversee four full-time bakers, full-time ice cream maker Ezequiel Cantor, and his part-time helper. In Ladd's two-part interview, Hoogerhyde talks about her inspiration, the places she likes to eat when she's not wrist-deep in dough, and the foods she considers guilty pleasures. In Thursday's installment, Hoogerhyde shares a recipe for stone-fruit galette ― a home-kitchen option when you just can't bear the infamous queues snaking down 18th Street. ―John Birdsall
SFoodie: Talk about how you got interested in food.
Hoogerhyde: Well, I was very surprised how easy and natural cooking came to me. I was a late bloomer when it came to cooking and loving food, I grew up a very picky eater, and it was not until I was in my early twenties that food became an obsession for me. Then when I did start to cook more and then eventually get into pastry everything felt like second nature to me, from holding a knife to rolling out dough, it just felt "right."
My first Bay Area food memory is of Postrio. Before moving to San Francisco in '93 from Michigan I came here for a dinner and can still remember everything about that meal, from the lobster pot stickers to the passion fruit cheesecake ― Janet Rikala was the pastry chef at that time and all her desserts were so good.
What ingredients and flavors you find yourself coming back to? I love anything with cinnamon or brown sugar ― I'll pass over anything chocolaty for these. I also love bacon (who doesn't?) and chile flakes.
Tomorrow: Part two of Mary Ladd's Q&A
Thursday: Hoogerhyde's recipe for stone fruit galette
