Years ago, Sally McKenney was working in the corporate world, though she found more joy in bringing baked goods for appreciative co-workers than she did in the actual work.

“There was zero creativity in my job and I didn’t know what I wanted to do with my life, but I’d bake cookies and people would ask for the recipes,” says McKenney. “I thought it would be fun if I put my recipes somewhere I could send to coworkers and friends when they asked—there was no real plan.”

By 2011, McKenney had taught herself how to build a website and soon created a site she dubbed sallysbakingaddiction.com.

“I published a cake-batter chocolate-chip cookie on my website using my then-boyfriend, now-husband’s fancy new camera and it went viral on Pinterest,” recalls McKenney. “It got thousands of page views a day. It dawned on me that maybe I could make a career out of this.”

Thanks to programmatic advertising, she soon had a business. “My first paycheck from my blog was for $80,” she says. “I was so proud of that. I made money from my own creativity—it took off from there.”

To date, the Baltimore County baker has an average of 25-million page views each month on her website, which now includes 1,200 recipes and educational videos. She also has her fourth baking book coming out in September 2025. This one is published by Clarkson Potter, Martha Stewart’s publisher.

How did you learn to bake?
I grew up in a family where we cooked and baked a lot from scratch, from gingersnap cookies to peach crisps and cherry pie. My grandmother on my mom’s side was a baker and cook. She found so much joy in the kitchen and instilled it in my mom, who passed it along to me. I spent the majority of my childhood baking from scratch and cooking with my mom.

Why do you think your blog speaks to so many people?
I love teaching followers how I came up with the recipe and the testing that went into it, as well as sharing the mistakes I made for the recipe to turn out—that makes it personable and relatable. I also focus a lot on teaching. I like to teach, “This is why the batter looks clumpy,” or why you need for the eggs to be room temperature. Teaching them the “why” lets people know they can trust my recipes. I’ve made the mistakes in the kitchen so you don’t have to figure out what works and what doesn’t.

You take all the food photos for your website—and upcoming baking book. What’s it like to photograph food?
Food stays in one place, but it also loses its luster. Yesterday, I was shooting brownies and you wouldn’t believe how much effort goes into making it look effortless. I was moving brownies with this big knife and a spatula to not get fingerprints on anything. You want it to look natural. It’s harder than it looks.

Do you have a sweet tooth?
I’m around desserts so much that at the end of the day I just want a big bag of salty chips.

What do you like about baking?
Baking makes everyone happy, which I find so fulfilling. I love sharing what I create and make. I love the way food can change lives and start new traditions and touch so many lives.

Like many people during the pandemic who found themselves sidelined, wardrobe and prop stylist Pascale Lemaire was looking for something to do with her newfound free time.

Lemaire, a former fashion and bridal editor at Baltimore, had always loved cooking and baking. So it was only natural for her to turn to Christina Tosi’s Bake Club on Instagram Live.

“I did it every day for 100 consecutive days,” says the Port-au-Prince, Haiti, native. “On the first day, we made cut-out cookies. At a time when everyone was stressing, this was the thing that made me happy.”

Her baked goods made her Instagram followers happy, too. After cooking class each day, Lemaire posted photos, including waffle cones, brownies, and Payday Pie. At the same time, she baked her late mother Suzy’s rum cake.

“Baking is in my blood,” says Lemaire. “My mother started baking all our birthday cakes, like one that was a Barbie with a dress made from frosting. In high school, I was in a production of Our Town, and my mom made the entire village in cake. She started catering for extra money.”

In December 2020, after posting a photo of the rum cake, Lemaire landed her first commission—and soon, she had a business on her hands. She dubbed it “Pascale Baking Diva,” an apt name for someone whose colorful career knows no bounds. (Styling stints include WE TV’s Style Me and Bravo’s The Real Housewives of Potomac, as well as clients like Under Armour and Jill Biden).

Though she has returned to styling by day, Lemaire does several pop-ups a year and fills special orders through DM on Instagram (@pascalebakingdiva). Lemaire brings her styling background to her baked goods, like lipstick-shaped cookies, and also honors her heritage by adding Haitian vanilla extract to her sweets.

“Baking and cooking is about giving joy,” she says. “Cookies are my love language.”

From the United Kingdom’s Cornish pasties to the fried savory “doubles” (a breakfast street staple) that are prevalent in Trinidad and Tobago, many cultures claim hand pies as their own.

Here at home, the pies, sweet and savory, are popping up all over Charm City, including the duck confit gumbo pies at Pie Time (available at the new Patterson Park storefront and area farmers markets), the blueberry rhubarb riff at Charlsie’s Bakehouse in Federal Hill, and these fruit-filled beauts (pictured above), from cinnamon apple to sour cherry, in a variety of appealing shapes from Lutherville-Timonium’s Stone Mill Bakery.

Why have these mini me’s made a resurgence?

“They’re an easy snack,” says Stone Mill pastry chef Cristina Quinteros. “Based on where you grew up, small, filled pies can be a part of your heritage. When we migrate, eating familiar foods maintains our bond with home. Hand pies, Pop Tarts, knishes, empanadas—call them what you want, as long as they’re wrapped in pastry and will fit in your hand.”

If you’ve been to the market lately, you’ve surely noticed that shortages are not limited to toilet paper and Purell.

As consumers continue to shelter at home during the pandemic, most area stores have also been wiped out of bread flour, sugar, and packets of dry yeast—sales of yeast grew 647 percent in the week ending March 21, compared to the same week in 2019, according to Nielsen data—and many Baltimoreans have turned to baking.

“I have never been a bread baker until now,” says Baltimore-based journalist Jennifer Mendelsohn. “I was always terrified of yeast,” she says, laughing. “I’m a competent baker, but I just had this mental block about yeast. It frightened me. It’s a living thing that needs coaxing and feeding.”

While new to bread baking, Mendelsohn says she has always enjoyed baking and cooking on snow days. When coronavirus struck, she says, “a lightbulb went off. I was like, ‘I’m going to make bread.’”

Of course, easier said than done. When she couldn’t find any yeast, a neighbor left a container of it on her doorstep. That yeast went into her first loaf, a crusty white bread that didn’t need kneading. She took great pride in the way it turned out.

“After making it, I felt like an alchemist,” Mendelsohn says. “I said on Twitter that the pride that I feel about successfully making bread is second only to having produced two small humans out of my body.”

But what is it about bread that home bakers find so appealing in times of crisis? For Mendelsohn, it’s about productivity.

“At a time when nothing is under our control, there’s something incredibly satisfying about doing something so elemental and creative from scratch.”

Others agree. Danny Mayhugh has been a budding baker for four years now, but with his work as a cameraman currently dried up, he has decided to turn his love of breadmaking into a bit of a temporary business model.

“At a time like this, it passes the time really well for me,” says Mayhugh in between an order for four dozen blueberry muffins and four loaves of bread (flavors include rustic wheat and white, as well as banana and zucchini bread). “So many things are out of our control right now, it’s nice to have something turn out right, especially for someone like me who doesn’t have a job right now.”

Another local baker making bread not only as an outlet for creativity, but also out of necessity, is dog trainer Rachael Bereson Lachow of Postively Obedient.

“I’ve always made birthday cakes, brownies, things like that,” she says, “but haven’t made bread for years. “We aren’t going to stores at all, so it seems like the only way to get good bread. My yeast expired two years ago, but it seems to be okay.”

Like Mayhugh, Dickeyville resident and MICA event planner Nelle Somerville has also been baking for years, but she has stepped up her game during the pandemic.

“I come from a foodie family,” says Somerville. “I grew up with a mom who made homemade peanut butter in a Cuisinart. My dad baked this sourdough when we were younger, and the smell was incredible. The starter lived in the fridge.”

Over a year ago, she turned to bread baking after La Cuchara baker Carrie Goltra shared her sourdough starter with Somerville. During the quarantine, Somerville has become something of the neighborhood baker.

“People have been giving me flour so I can bake them bread,” she says. “I walk outside and get a text that there’s three bags of flour at my front door.”

Baltimore research editor Christine Jackson has also been “bitten by the pandemic baking bug.” While some have taken to stress baking in these uncertain times, she sees the uptick as a way that people are finding comfort.

“When our days seem to be stretching longer than ever, baking bread feels purposeful and productive in a way that’s comforting instead of stressful,” Jackson says. “It’s not ‘I finally have time to do this chore, so I have to do it.’ It’s ‘I finally have time to do this right, so I’ll try it.’”

WYPR membership director Carolyn Jewell bakes for the simple reason that she likes to eat, but now that she’s home, she’s had more time to pursue her passion.

“For me, it’s just trying to literally feed that desire to stay well fed and just keep busy at the same time,” says Jewell. “I’ve been watching a lot of baking shows. And not being able to go to Bonjour Bakery to get what I normally get has led to necessity being the mother of invention. I made cranberry scones for the first time the other day.”

Jodi Miller, a senior executive assistant to the president at Johns Hopkins University, has always loved to bake, but has also gone into overdrive, partially out of survival mode, but also because it’s a family activity.

“Baking is something I enjoy and now I have more time to do it,” she says. “My son and I made eight chocolate chip banana breads the other day. I put them in my freezer.”

Jackson has even gone beyond baking, fermenting her own tepache and pickled cucumbers and carrots in jars. It’s all a way for her to keep busy while improving her recipes.

“Not one of them is perfect, but I had a great time making them all,” she says. “I’ve got plenty of time to experiment and improve. By the time we come out of this, I’m hoping they’ll be good enough to share.”

On a bright fall day in October, Karen Segall’s stately, 1930s-era Stevenson home is filled with the sweet smell of scented candles. But most days, especially on Sundays when she’s putting together care packages, it smells like some heavenly combination of breakfast treats, such as her son Ben’s favorite banana chocolate-chip pecan muffins; cookies, like her daughter Annie’s favorite chocolate-chip variety; or cakes coming straight out of the oven.

“With my kids away at college, every Monday, I’m at the post office mailing them care packages,” says Segall. “It’s the smell of the butter and sugar and things baking in the oven that they say they miss most.”

And while the ultra-lithe yoga teacher insists that she eats sweets on a daily basis, she finds even more pleasure in sharing her sweets with others.

“There’s a joy to me in giving them to someone,” she says. “I can’t explain it—there’s nothing better when someone is having a hard day than giving them lemon bars or something that is evocative of love—it’s just a simple thing to do for someone and easy way to make them feel good.”

For Segall, who even helped design and make her own wedding cake 24 years ago—a lemon cake with buttercream filling and fresh flowers—baking is in the blood. Growing up in Pikesville, her maternal grandparents owned The Gourmet Shoppe, a well-known fine foods store in Towson.

“I grew up there,” recalls Segall, who shares her home with her husband, Andy, a commercial real-estate broker, and dog Dash, named after Queen Victoria’s King Charles Spaniel. “I loved being in that store, it was like a second home for me. My uncle also owned a bakery off of Menlo Drive in Baltimore that supplied baked goods to many bakers and grocery stores, and I used to beg my parents to let me hang out there. I’d make rainbow cake and chocolate-top cookies—Maryland has the best desserts.”

Segall is a modern-day Betty Crocker, as she effortlessly whips up baked goods—pies, tortes, cookies, spelt and rye breads, and even a complicated multi-tiered Momofuku cake for Ben’s 18th birthday—in her elegant English-country style kitchen.

“I’m a serviceable cook,” she says modestly over grilled cheese and a bowl of tomato soup, “but I’m not really passionate about it. I prefer baking to cooking—cooking can be more imaginative. In baking you have to follow the rules—it’s like chemistry. To me, there’s nothing better than dessert.” And that includes something sweet over something savory at the dinner table. “Sometimes Andy will come home and ask, ‘What’s for dinner?’ and I’ll say, ‘Cookies!’” she says with only a trace of irony in her voice.

Much like the yoga classes Segall teaches at an area private school, baking is a form of meditation for her. “It’s very relaxing,” she says. “The actual process of baking is soothing, and there’s instant gratification—you make it, you put it in the oven, the smell is instantaneous.”

Above all, says Segall, it’s the rules of baking that appeal most. “I have always loved Food Network host Alton Brown because he explained the chemistry of cooking,” she says. “You always add dry to wet, not wet to dry, for example. If you follow the rules—put this together and that comes out—that’s what I love about it. When you bake, it’s like the universe makes sense.”

Here, Segall shares some of her favorite recipes:

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Dark Chocolate Bread Pudding

INGREDIENTS

• Unsalted butter, room temperature (for the baking dish)
• 1 pound day-old brioche (or challah), sliced 1⁄2 inch thick
• 3 cups whole milk
• 10 ounces good semi- sweet chocolate, coarsely chopped
• 1⁄2 cup sugar
• 1 teaspoon vanilla extract
• 1⁄2 teaspoon kosher salt
• 6 large eggs

DIRECTIONS

1. Preheat oven to 325 degrees.
2. Generously butter a 13×9 baking dish
3. Arrange bread in dish, overlapping as needed to fit.
4. Heat the milk, chocolate, sugar, vanilla, and salt in a heatproof bowl set over a saucepan of simmering water, stirring until the chocolate is almost completely melted, about three minutes.
5. Remove chocolate mixture from heat and stir until the chocolate is completely melted. Let cool.
6. Add the eggs, one at a time, to the chocolate, whisking to blend after each addition.
7. Pour over the bread, pressing to help the bread absorb the liquid.
8. Let sit at room temperature about one hour.
9. Bake uncovered until the bread pudding is just set, 30-35 minutes.
10. Let cool slightly and serve warm, with whipped cream if desired.

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Lemon-Ricotta Cake

INGREDIENTS

• 3 tablespoons unsalted butter
• 1 quart whole milk
• 1 3⁄4 cups semolina flour
• 1⁄2 teaspoon kosher salt
• 1 3⁄4 cups sugar
• 1 large lemon, zested
• 4 large eggs
• 2 cups fresh ricotta cheese, strained

DIRECTIONS

1. Preheat the oven to 325 degrees.
2. Butter an 11-inch round cake pan.
3. Heat the milk in a saucepan over medium heat until just simmering.
4. Whisk in the semolina and the salt. Boil, stirring constantly, for two minutes.
5. Remove the pan from the heat, add the sugar and butter, stirring until combined.
6. Transfer the batter to a mixing bowl to cool, stirring frequently to prevent
   a skin from forming. When the batter has cooled a bit, stir in the lemon zest.
7. Beat in the eggs slowly, one at a time, until combined.
8. Beat in the ricotta.
9. Pour the batter into the pan and bake for one hour until set and golden.

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Cherry Almond Torte

INGREDIENTS

• 1 cup flour
• 1 1/4 teaspoon baking powder
• 1 stick unsalted butter, softened
• 1 1/4 cups sugar
• 2 large eggs
• 2 teaspoons almond extract
• 15 once jar of tart, red cherries (like Morello), pitted and drained

DIRECTIONS

1. Preheat oven to 350 degrees.
2. Butter a 10-inch springform pan.
3. With the mixer on medium, beat butter and sugar for 2-3 minutes until light and fluffy.
4. Add the eggs slowly, one at a time, beating until each is incorporated.
5. Add the almond extract.
6. Sift the flour and baking powder together.
7. Add slowly to the butter mixture and mix until just incorporated.
8. Scrape the batter into the cake pan and smooth the surface with a spatula.
9. Spread the cherries evenly over the surface.
10. Bake for exactly 65 minutes.
11. Cool for 10 minutes, remove the sides of the pan and serve warm.

John Aversa, who trained as a pastry chef and is now head baker of the Bagby Restaurant Group, turned to bread-making after burning out on making the sweet stuff. “Bread is one of the few foods you can eat every day and never tire of,” he says. “In the grand scheme of things, making bread offers instant gratification.” 

Aversa drafts his designs on paper using a pencil, then traces it in pen and overlays the stencil film on top of the paper the design gets baked into the bread. Click through below to see what Aversa has to say about some of his most clever designs.