Today we’d like to introduce you to Noris Velazquez.
Hi Noris, we’d love for you to start by introducing yourself.
Thank you, I appreciate this opportunity and am grateful to Voyager for seeking out and highlighting business owners like me! Not only for the awesome marketing opportunity, but also to perhaps remind and reinvigorate fellow business owners with their own purpose, as well as inspire others to follow their entrepreneurial dreams. With that said, lets take a trip to New York City where it all started. That’s where I fell in love with pizza!
As a young teen visiting family in Harlem NY, I left my dad’s warm apartment to take a stroll down Broadway. It was a cold winter day, and I was hungry so I found this hole-in-the-wall pizzeria that had a large window counter to place orders from, not sure if the place even had a door, it was that small! Either way, it wasn’t long before I was handed a big slice of pie and it smelled divine! I thanked the pizzaiolo who had a strong eastern European look to him and a down-to-business demeanor; working diligently as he tossed pizzas in the oven behind him- much respect! With pizza in hand, I began walking down the street again when all of the sudden it began to snow. I watched snowflakes melt right before they landed on my pizza, it was a wonderful scene; New York in the background, snowflakes and pizza in the forefront and just as I took a bite, POW!!! The flavor and aroma took my senses over, and I was lost in amazement and perplexed on how and why pizza could taste so good!?!
After I got back to California, I began baking obsessively in hopes to crack the code on making awesome pizza but had little success. Some say the secret is New York water…maybe…maybe not. But then, I had a major breakthrough when talking with my Kung Fu instructor who guided me to the world of sourdough. Not only did it make amazing pizza crust just like I had that day in New York, but also amazing bread!!! THIS is how I imagined bread use to be like…until its commercialization.
Fast-forwarding to 2014, we were blessed with our first child- it’s a boy! Excited and also greatly concerned about not just paying for child care but giving our newborn baby to a stranger! So, I quite my job as a banker and later turned baker to care for our son! I figured I could always make money, but we’ve only got one shot at raising our kid. With the loving support of my wife Brooke, we figured it out and made things work. Then three years later, I started to think about ways to earn income while being a stay-at-home dad. I was already baking bread for my family on a weekly bases, so I made a few extra loaves and sold it to neighbors. It worked! Shortly after, I had my home kitchen permitted by the health department so I could expand into farmer’s markets, and that’s when the real fun began!
I’m sure you wouldn’t say it’s been obstacle free, but so far would you say the journey have been a fairly smooth road?
Not sure if any business has ever had a smooth road, especially with the covid complicating things- which required me to change how I sold bread entirely; from in person selling at farmer’s markets to taking orders online and offering curbside pickups. But looking back in the beginning, my biggest challenge aside from mental doubts, was logistics in figuring out how to use a standard home kitchen to bake dozens of loaves with no commercial equipment, just large mixing bowls and a standard gas oven.
It was stressful and oftentimes ended in burnt, poorly risen, and under-baked bread. Oh, did I mention burnt, yeah, not only the bread but my hands and arms. I recall accidentally touching the oven as I loaded a tray of cheese topped loaves, so focused on them that I failed to notice my hand heading towards the oven wall- OUCH I shouted, followed by a quick jerk resulting in cheese spilling on the floor and on the oven door, it was a mess- a burnt mess. And before I could continue baking, things had to get cleaned up and the breads re-topped with cheese. You see in baking, time is ticking away in the background and setbacks like this can ruin multiple batches of bread as delays can cause bread that’s waiting to be baked to miss its turn in the oven and begin to deflate and ultimately collapse; losing their airy and fluffy texture, not cool…borderline depressing…
Even now, bread baking still requires precise timing. Once water touches flour the stopwatch begins and a break in the flow from mixing to kneading, rising to shaping, and finally baking can become a train wreck, as one process crashes into another due to delays. The good new is, I’m better at troubleshooting, have a more positive attitude towards unexpected delays, like when my 2 year old wakes up early from her nap and is now crying and screaming my name- DADDY. And it also helps that I don’t jerk so much when I burn my hands, LOL.
Thanks – so what else should our readers know about your work and what you’re currently focused on?
I feel that there’s a natural bond between food and artistry; a limitless medium to express one’s self for others to enjoy on the deep nourishing level. It’s very rewarding for me, I get a heartfelt satisfaction when people enjoy my food. All the hard work and effort of seeking out heirloom grains to mill fresh to create custom flour blends and flavors, or the time it takes to culture my own buttermilk and hand grind spices verse using store bought. It all becomes well worth it when I see people enjoying the fruits of my labor.
I believe food can carry with it the loving vibes the preparer touched it with. I once heard a baker say, “we are selling energy here at our bakery, it just happens to be in the form of bread”. Albert Einstein simply stated, “everything is energy and that’s all there is to it”. And I agree whole heartedly! In fact, as a practicing martial artist of over 16 years at White Tiger Kung Fu, I’ve learned and have experienced the effects of the special Chi Kung meditations that are taught there. According to ancient Chinese folklore as well as my own personal experience, these meditations create powerful health producing vibrations that not only influence me, but my bread as well. It’s a game changer in a big positive way!
Interestingly enough, these concepts were proved by New York Times bestseller and internationally renowned Japanese scientist Masaru Emoto in his book titled “The Hidden Messages in Water”. Dr. Emoto describes the ability of water to absorb, hold, and even transmit human feelings and emotions; in essence you can see a picture of its energy. Dr. Emoto proved this with hard science and example of his work can be found on google which will show pictures either of beautiful snowflake structures that positive words/emotions produced as well as the grotesque images of negative ones. Knowing that the human body is mostly made of water and bread requires a great deal of it as well, I have concluded that we are not just what we eat physically speaking, but also greatly influenced by the energy vibe it carries!
So before donning on our aprons, whether for customers or serving family and friends, let’s remember to also don on our smiles and fill our food with the love and joy of Heart!
What are your plans for the future?
To re-educate people that bread can be made healthy in order to fuel our body, mind and Spirit! We can help shed its chemical additives and short cutting processes that have ruined it and watch it to RISE once again through the care and hard working hands of the artisan baker to be the Staff of Life! Hi, my name is Noris Velazquez, I’m the Kung Fu baker, and together we can make this happen. Thank you for your support!
Contact Info:
- Email: SourdoughDelight@gmail.com
- Website: SourdoughDelight.com
- Instagram: instagram.com/SourdoughDelight
- Facebook: facebook.com/SourdoughDelight
- Youtube: youtube.com/channel/UCFD_el1X_UKqQakbxnCaQfA
- Yelp: yelp.com/biz/sourdough-delight-san-diego-2?osq=sourdough+delight
