Today we’d like to introduce you to Emilie Frances Foote.
Hi Emilie, please kick things off for us with an introduction to yourself and your story.
I moved from AZ to TN with my husband late 2020 and we moved in our house in Pleasant View at the end of January 2021. I knew I wanted to start a full time home bakery, I already had preordered in imported bread oven from Belgium and was hoping to get it delivered in the new house – spoiler alert, it arrived once I had everything ready and it came at the perfect time as my bigger piece of equipment.
I quickly connected through acquaintances with a business in Nashville – and another one in my small town. I started getting attention and partnered up with another two businesses. Along the way, I decided to move my business to my driveway, until a neighbor “called me in” and tried to make me stop my business. That’s when I understood it was time to go bigger, and I partnered with our local Grocery Store HG Hill in Pleasant View. I’ve been working with them since July 2024 and my business grew so much! I started baking croissants again, I got larger equipment and I am so blessed to be baking for my community. I am starting to teach classes also, I had my first masterclass at HG hill last month, in October 2025. Looking forward to do more of this!
In the mean time, I bake 4 days a week and work full time with them and my second and last partner, The Yorkshire deli in Kingston springs.
I love working from home and I don’t see myself doing anything else but baking and cooking. I am so grateful I can live off of it!
We all face challenges, but looking back would you describe it as a relatively smooth road?
Well, truth is that I was challenged the whole time, but it’s always an opportunity to grow, even when I don’t see it at first. I have been pushed to work my formulas again, change a little something here and there, always trying to make it better and improve the process in any way. Always trying to improve my techniques, get a better understanding of the fermentation process and create tricks to have a better hand on it. It’s always something!
Then someone in my neighborhood tried to make me stop, I guess they were bothered by the traffic caused by customers picking up they order from my driveway, but again, this was my opportunity to get out there and have a bigger impact on my community!
So yes, there’s been some challenges but I’ve always looked for the bigger picture and found the opportunity behind it!
Can you tell our readers more about what you do and what you think sets you apart from others?
I am a self taught baker and I specialize in sourdough. I learned how to bake early on when I arrived in the USA and I was running a small business, a small Italian-French deli in chandler, AZ. I started working and playing with sourdough in the summer of 2019 with a French guy I had met on a farmers market. I quickly got into it and 6 months before Covid, I started as a pastry chef in a restaurant, then as a cook at JL Patisserie in Scottsdale, AZ. I learned a lot about bread, viennoiseries and French cakes with her and with Covid hitting, I started baking from home to make both ends meet.
I learned mostly all myself and practiced until I got it right and understood all the tricks. I have that understanding of sourdough beyond what you can find in a book. It has been hours of baking, shaking, sweating, experimenting, succeeding and failing at times. I like that I didn’t skip the hard work to get straight to the easy part. I had to live through it to make it mine.
Can you share something surprising about yourself?
I have never baked bread while living in France. Anywhere you can walk down the street and find decent bread. Actually, in a different life back in France, I was an optician, selling frames and lenses and contacts to customers, I would be in the workshop using large machineries to cut the lens for the frame, I would give advice on which frame to choose and also take care of insurance benefits. It was just a few years of my life and as a result I still love sunglasses and own a few!
Contact Info:
- Instagram: @chef_emilie
- Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/share/19ywzAHWxb/?mibextid=wwXIfr
