Avila rises to the occasion with sourdough bread venture

Taylor Made Baked Goods

What was once a child’s dream — and a traveler’s delight — has grown into a new venture for Taylor Avila and her family.

People clamor for Avila’s organic sourdough bread, baked in her own kitchen and shipped or sold locally, as Taylor Made Baked Goods.

On May 7, Avila set up shop in the Boerne Farmer’s Market on East Blanco Road for the second time this spring, once again selling out of as much product as she could bring.

“We sold out last week in an hour and a half,” she said. “Before we even got fully set up today (May 7), I was already selling bread. It’s been amazing.”

Avila was fortunate to spend time in Europe as a teenager, sampling the tradition-rich foods of Europe, including breads baked fresh in France and Germany.

After she and husband Roy Avila settled and began raising a family, she decided to “get back to nature” and began watching what they ate. She purposefully rooted out bioengineered and processed foods, and foods packed with red dye 40, from their diet.

“That’s when I started making it. It’d been hard to find real bread so I started making it, and trying to get it as close to the bread I ate in Europe as I can,” she said.

Nobody bakes just one loaf of bread at a time, so Avila soon found herself with an extra loaf of bread or two and she began giving it away to friends and neighbors.

“I started giving it to friends and I had so many people tell me, ‘You have a gift, you have to start this,’” she said. “I’m not the kind of person who would naturally put myself out there and try something like this. But everything fell into place. It seemed like a natural progression.”

She launched Taylor Made Baked Goods in September 2023 with a post on the Next Door app — “and it absolutely blew up,” she said.

“I’ve been doing sourdough since September of last year and it has completely exploded. It’s been such an amazing experience.”

At her first appearance at the farmer’s market on April 30, Avila sold out of all her product in less than 90 minutes. So, she doubled her output for the May 7 market appearance: 65 loaves. That’d be plenty, she thought ... until she arrived.

Minutes shy of the two-hour mark, she had nine loaves left. That’s a sales pace of a loaf every two minutes.

“The community has been incredible. I’ve made a lot of new friends and people that I never would have known outside the connections we’ve made with bread.”

Avila is a purist, she says. “Some people will make it with cheese and jalapenos. But I’m a purist. I feel like it compromises the quality of my bread.”

She said she wants to invest in a grain mill so she can start milling her own flour. But first up — an industrial oven.

“I’d like to buy an industrial oven. It took me 7 1/2 hours to bake the 65 loaves,” she said.

Life remains a constant bustle for the mother of 2½-yearold twins and a 7-year-old she is home-schooling.

“We have another business, so I’m in between everything. It’s been a great way for me to be a stay-at-home mom and have a second source of income. It’s been amazing.”

She admits she had dreams as a little girl of someday opening a bakery of her own.

“But I was just a kid. Now, I’m doing it,” she said. “Honestly, it’s not something I ever planned. I just started making sourdough, and it’s taken on a life of its own.”