Credit: Ooni

Bryan Ford on Bread, Culture, and the Craft of Curiosity

7 Minute read

24 Oct 2025

Paul Feinstein

Journalist

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The New Orleans–born baker with Honduran roots has built a global following by blending heritage, technique, and a fearless curiosity for what bread can become.

Bryan Ford grew up in New Orleans in a Honduran household where food was the language of comfort. “Food is kind of the backbone of comfort,” he said. “I was always interested in learning how to cook because my mom cooked so well.”

When he left home for college, that love for cooking turned into something bigger. He started a cooking club with friends—students who didn’t know how to cook—and taught them the basics. “I thought it was bizarre that people couldn’t cook,” he said. “It didn’t register to me that someone couldn’t sear a chicken breast or make rice.” The club grew into a small catering business serving fraternities and sororities. By day he studied accounting, but at night he cooked in local restaurants. “I was just trying catfish, making barbecue shrimp, making oyster Rockefeller po’boys, making red beans and rice,” he said. “Nothing notable… just a bunch of little spots.”

Roots and Rising

Baking entered his life almost by accident. “I started baking King Cakes,” he said. “Selling them during the parades of Mardi Gras.” He was 18 or 19 at the time. “That was kind of my transition from cook to baker,” he said. “It was unique to bake fresh bread—fresh iconic bread—because people are used to getting it from the supermarket.”

He earned his accounting degree and worked as a CPA, but baking never stopped. “Every single day I was just going home from work and baking,” he said. “I didn’t have social media. I was just doing it for myself.” In those early years he became obsessed with technique. “I was perfecting croissants and perfecting baguettes,” he said. “That’s what I would do every single day.”

By 2016, Ford had reached a breaking point with accounting. “I was kind of fed up with being an accountant,” he said. “I quit, and I moved to Miami.” There, a friend encouraged him to start a bakery. “He was like, ‘Yo, move here, open a bakery or something.’ And I was like, bet.” Miami became his laboratory. “I started making sourdough like crazy,” he said. “It turned into that obsession.”

At the time, Zach the Baker was one of the few names in town. “He was really the only game in town,” Ford said. “I was really inspired by his work.” Ford began popping up at coffee shops and farmers markets and doing small wholesale runs. He also began documenting his process online. “I started blogging about my bread—my pan de coco, coconut breads, Caribbean Latin American breads with sourdough—and that took off,” he said.

That blog, Artisan Bryan, became the foundation for everything that followed. “It turned into the media career,” he said. “The reason I didn’t open a bakery in Miami is because the media career just kind of skyrocketed.”

He had already spent years in kitchens honing his craft. “I worked at a lot of bakeries along the way,” he said. “I worked at bagel shops. I worked at a Sullivan Street Bakery [wholesale outpost] that opened up down there… I learned a lot at that bakery, a lot about dough mixing and shaping.” He also served as head baker for Toscana Divino, an Italian restaurant group with a pizzeria, refining his technical knowledge.

Credit: Ooni

Media, Bread, and Beyond

Ford’s first book, New World Sourdough, “sold about 110,000 copies.” It has been translated into multiple languages and helped propel his work to a wider audience.

“My wife is actually a TV producer,” he said. “She reached out to me in 2020… and she produced my first show for Magnolia Network.” That show, The Artisan’s Kitchen, “turned into a second show which aired on HBO Max, called Baked in Tradition.”

“Then I did a guest judge spot on Food Network. I did a judge spot on Hulu’s Best in Dough, a pizza competition. I just most recently judged Netflix’s Blue Ribbon Baking Championship, which was really cool with Sandra Lee.”

“And then my wife created and produced Shondaland’s first food podcast called The Flaky Biscuit Podcast, which I hosted. We did 26 episodes of that. That was really cool.”

His second book, Pan y Dulce: The Latin American Baking Book, was published in November 2024.

Today, he shares recipes and process videos with an audience of more than 300,000 across social platforms.

“It’s always incredible to say it out loud,” he said. “It kind of feels like it’s out of a movie—it doesn’t even make sense.”

What began as a college cooking club has become a career that redefines modern breadmaking—one built on culture, patience, and the belief that there’s still something new to discover in every loaf.

24 Oct 2025