Chris Martin has baked in cities from Chicago to San Francisco, but she has rarely found local ingredients like those in central Virginia.
That’s one reason bakernobakery, her pop-up bakeshop, boasts one of the most unique menus at the City Market.
“Sourcing ingredients is really a delight here in Charlottesville,” says Martin, creator of delicacies such as raspberry and bay leaf tres leches and whisky ginger blondies, among others. “The climate and the location are really incredible for growing a lot of produce.”
Not only do locals find inventive methods of growing non-native produce—one of Martin’s vendors keeps a greenhouse hot enough to grow citrus year-round—but the woods around Charlottesville are thick with treasures like the paw-paw fruit, recognizable by its tropical-looking vines.
The paw-paw has a flavor Martin describes as a mixture of banana, mango, and pineapple. Her version of a bostock—typically a slice of brioche soaked in simple syrup and covered with almonds—is filled with paw-paw pastry cream and paw-paw purée, then topped with crunchy nutmeg. She also gives the French pastry a Southern twist by substituting a slice of pound cake.
After sharing a city market tent with local company SoSS, Martin decided to incorporate SoSS’s small-batch hot sauce into a pastry. She folded charred onions into cream cheese filling, then added soy sauce, lemongrass and SoSS’s Burger Venom to create an explosively flavorful Danish.
Martin is currently prepping fall ingredients for holiday cookie orders. She jellies persimmons by soaking them in simple syrup for weeks. She purées regional kabocha, a light, almost floral-tasting winter squash, which pairs well with white chocolate and candied ginger. And the creamy paw-paw purée is a perfect match to the white chocolate ganache inside her hand-painted bonbons.
When customers are intimidated by these new flavors, Martin suggests starting with her apple fritters, and that’s usually enough to convince them to try more.
“Since my background is in fine dining, I’ve had a lot of exposure to different techniques and different flavors,” she says. “It allows me to expand and build a level of trust with a lot of my customers.”
Learn more about Martin’s creative baking at bakernobakery.com.