Iowa baker forgoes engineering career for her American Dream
Roshani Samdurkar has run her prolific M.A.D. Bakery in the Quad Cities area of Iowa since 2022, and while she is mad about bread, the bakery is actually named after the acronym for My American Dream. “I've always been passionate about baking, but I went the engineering route first,” Roshani said with a chuckle.
She came to the United States in 2010 from Pune, India to do her master’s in engineering. Over a decade of working here as a quality engineer she built her baking skills, attending the Bread Camp at the French Pastry School in Chicago, taking online workshops and classes with the Bread Bakers Guild of America, and attending the San Francisco Baking Institute.
That formal study, however, did not feature sourdough, regional grains, or freshly milled flour—the things that now define her bakery. While taking a bread class in 2019, Roshani noticed bakers making hearth loaves in another classroom. Seeing bakers loading an oven with big freeform loaves using a long peel was so exciting that she started talking to the chef, who gave her some starter. Her first foray was a no-knead sourdough using King Arthur flour, which prompted her to start digging for information and sources for alternative flours. She found AGC online, and at a local farmers’ market she discovered Early Morning Harvest, an Iowa farm and mill located about three hours west of her, and began using their flour. “Grains definitely changed the game in terms of textures and flavors in the breads I was baking,” said Roshani. She also loved the sense of community she experienced by meeting the people who were growing and milling grains.
Continuing to work her full-time job, she knew she wanted to someday open a bakery or café, and worked toward that goal by baking for friends and family. In 2022, a social media post kicked her career transition into gear: a Michelin star restaurant in Slovenia was looking for a head baker, so she decided to apply, and they invited her there for a stage. (Staging is a common experience in the culinary field, drawing bakers and cooks to intern briefly at establishments they admire.) Within days she’d quit her job and was in another country, immersed in learning the flow of a restaurant kitchen, and adapting her own recipes for sourdough chocolate chunk cookies and cheese biscuits to available ingredients.
Returning to India for some visa paperwork, she seized the opportunity for a stint at an artisan bakery in her hometown. She was wowed working with the small team and impressed by their great country sourdoughs and rustic focaccias. Learning about bread production and how to manage multiple doughs was just what she needed to steer out of engineering. When she returned to Iowa in the summer of 2022, she poured herself into starting her own bakery. As a small business owner wearing so many hats, she tells us she was glad to have the AGC network at her fingertips—fellow members she could just e-mail, call, or text for answers and referrals. Another helpful resource was SCORE, a national group of retired business experts who help entrepreneurs.
Roshani belongs to AGC’s Bakers Working Group, and enjoys being connected to her regional/fresh flour baking peers. She uses flour from three AGC members. Breadtopia provides her bread flour, and others as needed. She gets spelt, einkorn, cornmeal, and semolina from Janie’s Mill, and other flours from Early Morning Harvest. She has observed that similar flours from different places—such as buckwheat from Janie’s Mill and Early Morning Harvest—each lend something new to a batch.
Her menu includes standard sourdough breads and focaccia plus variations, like the Cheese-Chili Focaccia inspired by a childhood snack she enjoyed in India. Her sweet and savory scones and chocolate chunk cookies are popular, and brioche burger buns with Frederick flour from Janie’s Mill have been a hit this summer. She and one part-time baker make 400-550 items each week, including about 100 loaves of bread. In addition to providing food, she strives to educate and inspire her customers to learn about their regional grain chain, handing out our infographic, and encouraging them to explore AGC’s website.
“People don’t know much about whole grains and everyone is used to seeing what's available on the shelves at stores,” Roshani said, so her menu prompts conversations. Her customers are grateful for the knowledge, and she takes pride in her advocacy.
“I want to talk to folks about local grains. I think it's crucial to strengthen our local economy as much as possible not just from a financial point of view but also from a nutritional one,” she said. She’s passionate about using foods around her to help foster community, and customers sense that. “They want to have coffee sessions with me, to know more about bread and the people that I work with.”
To be able to voice these connections, she said, is a privilege. We are glad to have such a champion in our network!
