Olaf Growald
Browse the pastry case and get a whiff of the freshly made bread at Stephanie and Mark Garza’s new bakery, and you’ll swear nothing’s amiss. But the Garzas have done something quite different for Fort Worth: They’ve opened a 100% vegan bakery.
In April, the couple opened Planted Bakery in the southwest Fort Worth neighborhood of Wedgwood. Their menu includes sandwiches, salads, cookies, doughnuts, cakes, pepperoni rolls, and other sweet and savory treats, all made with vegan ingredients.
But the star attraction is the “cruffin.” Stephanie chats with us about this unusual pastry and her and her husband’s unique bakery.
FW: What exactly is a cruffin and how did you come up with the idea?
SG: A cruffin is a cross between a croissant and a muffin — it’s croissant dough baked in a popover or muffin tin. A New York bakery invented the cruffin, but our version is wider and fluffier. We make flavors for every palate: butter, bacon, maple sausage and cheddar, cheddar and green onion, chocolate, and more.
FW: You make pastries and bread in-house. How did you learn how to bake?
SG: I have been baking since middle school. My mom taught me to use her old Betty Crocker Cookbook, and I learned how to follow recipes and figure out baking terms and vegan substitutions. Mark has been experimenting with bread for about a year, and he learned from Ken Forkish’s book, Flour Water Salt Yeast. The pastries and bread are made here, but the soy and seitan-based meats for some of the pastries and sandwiches are sourced from The BE-Hive Deli & Market in Nashville.
FW: What led you and your husband to become vegan?
SG: We tried several dieting paths to get healthy for our kids, and three years ago we read Dr. Michael Greger’s How Not to Die. By the end of the book, we couldn’t un-learn all we had read about what meat and dairy were doing to our bodies. We were about to take the kids to the Grand Canyon on vacation, and we decided if we could stay vegan on vacation, we would stick with it forever. So, we did it, and here we are.
5400 Woodway Drive, Ste. 120, plantedbakery.com
Olaf Growald
