KANSAS CITY, MO — Passion is what drives bakers. It’s what pulls them out of bed at odd hours and pushes them into the bakery to start the day’s production. It’s what keeps them fueled as they replicate routines and follow detailed recipes. It’s what allows them to provide the highest quality products for their customers, every time.
This is true at McLain’s Bakery in Kansas City, MO, where Sharon Reitz, director of bakery experience, and Lisenia Salazar, head baker, work in sync to ensure every customer gets what they’ve come to expect: local treats with a homemade feel.
Teamwork, dream work
Lisenia, who oversees McLain’s commissary, prepares most of the dough on-site for the bakery’s six Kansas City metro area locations. Communication is paramount for the multi-store team. She relies on information that’s necessary for her to provide what they need — including cookie dough, cake bites, bars, sweet dough and donut dough — while maintaining quality across different batches and stores.
“The satisfaction for me comes when it’s busy and we see the delivery truck full,” Lisenia said. “It’s a feeling of, ‘We did it. And we always do.’”
The prepped dough then enters Sharon’s jurisdiction, where she ensures everything bakes off as it should. Her job includes standardizing recipes across the bakeries, managing multiple teams and inventories, and testing new products, which isn’t exactly a piece of cake.
“Managing product levels across six locations is probably one of the biggest day-to-day challenges,” Sharon said. “There’s a lot of thought and discussion behind what we put in the case.”
Both bakers wear many hats, and juggling these responsibilities requires them to work in a harmony that’s tough to achieve from separate locations. Lisenia can’t be at the stores to see the final outcomes, and Sharon can’t control everything in the stores. For it to work, communication between the two is vital.
With diligence and hard work, the duo keeps things moving. So well, in fact, they make it look easy.
“We hold each other accountable,” Lisenia said. “If I make a mistake and [Sharon] catches it, I have to own it and fix it. I don’t see what’s right or wrong until she bakes it, but I know I have her eyes out there, and I know she’s going to help and support me.”
As most bakers know, artisan baked goods are rarely uniform, and even the simplest bake can render a surprise result, especially when factors like ambient temperatures and equipment differ per location. Even after following each step closely, there’s variability in the craft.
“You have to use all your senses to know when a product is done,” Sharon said. “And then you have to teach that to your team. You teach them to see it, taste it, hear the mixer … it’s not all about following instructions. Sometimes those are just guidelines.”
This story has been adapted from the June | Q2 2025 Craft to Crumb mini-mag. Read the full story in the digital issue here.
