Baking is a taste of home. Kira Isbell, the owner of Blue Sunflour Bakeshop in Colorado Springs, thinks back to the baking her mom used to do on the farm they grew up on in Kansas. The taste of breads and her ever-popular scones connect her to those memories as well as her current community in Colorado Springs through everything from her pumpkin scones to her rosemary focaccia bread.
“For me, baking started at an early age. My mom baked, and she did farmers’ markets for a little while, so she taught me how to bake. And as a kid, I loved it. I loved being in the kitchen. But it was not my goal to grow up and be a baker,” she says. “I just did it for fun, and for family and friends through the years.”
Isbell says it wasn’t until about two or three years ago that she went back to it. “I was going through some hard times and baking brought some peace and re-centering … almost like baking therapy in the kitchen.”
As she spent more time in the kitchen baking, it just kind of turned into a business. “I thought, ‘Oh, I could try this!’” The idea for the bakeshop also came from her love of people and wanting to be connected to her community.
“I think, specifically bread and scones, just because I love them, but bread specifically comes from the whole ‘breaking bread together.’ My mom bakes a lot of bread, so it does go back to the things I remember in the kitchen with her and about bringing comfort.”
That’s what Isbell tries to bring to her customers. “It is literally about breaking bread together with other people. So, bread is a big part of the bakery for that reason.”
Making Many Breads at Blue Sunflour
Isbell makes a lot of different breads. She is getting more into sourdough because that’s what is popular right now. She also creates a lot of breads to be served with dinner including high-demand ones like focaccia, rye bread, halal, and honey wheat.
The time aspect, she says, as with most bakers, along with the differences in approach between Colorado versus Kansas has been the biggest challenge. “I’m still doing most of everything myself. So, I’m doing all the back-end stuff, I’m doing the baking, I’m delivering,” she says. “Managing all of that can be really hard.”
Beyond that, she says it also comes down to what breads she must make on a given day, how many people want them, and how much time is it going to take to bake. Isbell explains that you kind of work backward from that list logistically and figure out the schedule of “OK … maybe I schedule things a little differently and have different breads available on different days.”
With bread, Isbell says she feels like she is still learning about its seasonal uses. She uses the example of a local women’s club she attends, where she brings bread. One of the ladies there mentioned to Isbell that she doesn’t eat a lot of bread until the winter season (with hot soups). Isbell says a lot of the darker hardier breads do better in the colder seasons because people have them with their heartier stews. In the summer, she says she noticed a lot of her sweeter bread will do better like her lemon breads.
Memories of Honey Wheat and French Toast
With some of the more year-round popular breads like honey wheat, Isbell says she has heard a lot of comments like, “That bread was so good. It reminded me of what my mom made when I was a kid.” She says you can just hear the happiness in those customers’ voices. “I have a cinnamon bread that I also make that a couple of people order because it reminds them of their mom. And I love that.”
Isbell also talks about a Challah bread she makes, which she says people love because it makes a great French toast. Everyone can tell her a different story. “And that’s something I wouldn’t have thought about. I was just making bread for you. I didn’t know that there was a story and a tradition that you have with it.”
There are many preparations for sourdough. Isbell can make white sourdough, rye sourdough and whole wheat. “I use whole wheat in a lot of my sourdough because I think it’s better and people respond well to it.”
With her honey wheat, she puts sunflower seeds in it. “And that’s very intentional because I’m from Kansas and the bakery is called Blue Sunflour. And I wanted an item that was kind of the signature bread that represented Kansas a little bit.”
Isbell also loves to support local as much as she can. “I’ll buy local honey [she uses Rocky Mountain Bee Supply] to make the bread with, because a lot of my bread, rather than using sugar, I’ll use honey to activate the yeast because I think it tastes better.”
Sweet Scones are her Cornerstone
Scones are a cornerstone of Blue Sunflour as well as the establishments she supplies like Colonel Mustards Sandwich Emporium and Humble Coffee. For Isbell, there are really two kinds of scones: English scones and American scones. She makes the American ones, which are sweeter. “They’re lighter and fluffier – and I’ve been fine-tuning my recipe for a few years now. I use sour cream rather than heavy cream or milk, which I’ve found is the key to making it light and fluffy as well as moist and delicious.”
She is trying to bring people around to a love of scones. “I like a challenge. And it’s been fun to win people over with scones. Because most people hear ‘scones’ and are like, ‘No. I don’t like scones. They’re dry.’ And I’m like, ‘No. Try my scones and then talk to me.’ And it’s funny because people always tell me like, “Oh, they’re sweet!?’ but I honestly don’t put a ton of sugar in it.”
She says it is about getting the right ratio of all the other things or by having more fruit in it or a little bit of chocolate. Isbell tries to keep the sugar content down. But, as with all things, she says there has been a learning curve with scones too in terms of preparation as well as storage. “If I bake things to take to a market where I’m going to be outside, I have to package them differently than if I’m just selling them to a store.”
Ultimately though, it is about taste first and presentation second. “I know that there’s a lot of people out there who are all about fancy desserts and breads. But for me, I like to keep it simple, honestly. And I think that helps things to last and look better longer in a way. But that’s been really fun for me, slowly winning people over in Colorado Springs just with scones and changing that mindset.”
So is this a retail establishment? Does it have an address? Hours? Prices? Or is the reader expected to search the Web because the reporter could not be bothered with such simple info?