Loaves of fun

Photo by Danny Fulgencio

After Christine Carey divorced a few years ago, she needed a way to make a little money and still be home in time to pick her three kids up from school. The design degree she earned in the ’90s was a bit outdated, since so much had changed since then, and she needed a flexible schedule. “I knew how to bake bread and do a lot of stuff like that,” she says. “So I thought, ‘I’ll just start baking bread and selling it at the farmers markets.’ ” That’s how her start-up, We Me Bakery, came to be. Carey lived for four years in Spain where she learned to bake the rustic Spanish bread that is the foundation of her business. The neighborhood resident also produces sauces and spreads that complement the bread. She recently started making pimento cheese, which Cox Farms Market in Duncanville and the online grocer Greenling have picked up. Greenling has told her it will buy any in-season prepared foods she can make, but Carey is operating on what she calls “a snail economy.” “I do everything for my kids first,” she says. “And I work during the school day.” Carey has a kitchen and a booth at the Grand Prairie Farmers Market, where she sells her wares from 8 a.m.-1 p.m. every Saturday. In the wintertime, she also has a spot at the Coppell Farmers Market. She has a few personal chef clients in the neighborhood. And she brings five loaves of bread a week to the Coffee Co. in Lakewood. She’s fine with keeping the business very small. “If someone gave me $250,000, I would buy a big kitchen and hire help and expand,” she says. “But I don’t want to be in debt.”