KANSAS CITY, MO — Led by Cat Cox, owner and 2025 James Beard Foundation Award winner for Outstanding Pastry Chef or Baker, the Country Bird Bakery team has its hands full every day of the week, despite its unique schedule. The Tulsa, OK, bakery is open on Saturdays — and, only recently, Thursdays — for pickup orders customers place online during the week, as well as wholesale deals for retail spots scattered across the community.
As the bakers maneuver the kitchen, lists of potential inclusions, flavors and ingredients line the refrigerators and tables around them. Product development is inspired by daily life, ingredient availability and baker creativity.
Test flight on innovations
Peanut and Pandan Pastry Cream Cruffins, Blueberry Sonoran Scones, Bourbon Caramel Apple Jam Kouign-Amanns and Cherry Sudachi Twists are just a few of the imaginative creations made by Country Bird’s bakers.
“We take inspiration from everywhere,” Cat said. “A lot of things I’ve incorporated around here are things I figured out while working as a pastry chef. I learned about the different things you can do in the kitchen, like steeping cream with different herbs or fruits to add flavor, and that opened up a whole new world of possibilities.”
Cat passes on this inspiration to her team members, whose curiosity and eagerness to learn drive everyday innovation. By using the same base dough, the bakery maintains quality while experimenting with its menu, adding outside-the-box flavor combos and in-season mashups each week.
Take the bakery’s Peanut Chile Crisp Croissant Snail, for example. Featuring local peanuts from Snider Farms, this creation was dubbed a brainchild of baker Caitlin Woods, who values the creative freedom of working with seasonal ingredients combined with local heritage.
“Even our wheat is grown and milled here in Oklahoma,” Caitlin said. “It’s really cool that we get to use local ingredients, not only with inclusions but also when it comes to the wheat itself.”
The team’s fervor for trying new things is a testament to the core belief that the right customers will make their way in their own time, and when they do, they’ll stick around.
“It’s always been about what we want to make,” Cat said. “I’ve seen places start a poll online, ‘What do you guys want to see?’ That’s not how I want to operate. I trust that we’re going to bake what we want to bake, and our customers will find us.”
Finding the right flock
The synchronicity between the bakers isn’t obtained through luck. Strategic hiring practices help grow the bakery’s capabilities, one set of hands at a time. There’s the first hire, Abby Burton, whose lamination skills have been the foundation for all the bakery’s croissant creations, and Courtney Schwamb, whose expertise (and patience) with spreadsheets has streamlined inventory and product development.
On the production floor, Caitlin and the rest of the team carry the physical load of mixing, laminating and baking, combining their expertise to keep things running and allow for expansion in other parts of the business.
Along with Thursday/Saturday sales, the bakery also supplies retailers with artisan baguettes and offers monthly workshops, hosting up to 15 people at a time.
“I’ve taught more than 1,000 people to make sourdough bread,” Cat said. “I want people to get the whole experience, no matter what they know already, because I’m a hands-on, visual learner. And it’s fun.”
Like the bakery’s menu, workshop classes are also inspired by seasonal applicability, with new flavors and formats each month to keep things fresh.
“When it’s cold out, people want to be baking bread at home,” Cat said. “Pizza is more of a warm-weather thing, and we encourage people to use in-season garden produce on their pizzas.”
Following her James Beard Award win, Cat says new product development has been placed on the proverbial back burner. For now, the bakery staff is keeping an eye on maintaining the purpose behind it all, which was originally to plant roots in a place worth sharing, one reminiscent of family, authenticity and hard work.
It’s the intention behind Country Bird, its airy spirit and fearless invention, that keeps customers coming back. They happily return week after week, waiting in line in the freezing winter cold and scorching summer heat, just to get a taste of home in the form of expertly crafted loaves and pastries.
“To truly integrate a business into a community, you have to have a story and make it personal,” Cat said. “Country Bird is personal to me, but also to Oklahoma as a whole. People are invested in our story because they’re part of it. They carry it with them wherever they go.”
This story has been adapted from the May | Q2 2026 Craft to Crumb mini-mag. Read the full digital issue here.
