The Inspiration
Our story is one of passion, innovation, and determination.
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It begins about 8 years ago when Linda, a professional pastry chef with an extensive background in IT, felt frustration with the lack of reliable tools to help bakers perfect their recipes. Linda envisioned a software tool that would leverage the power of baking science and data to provide bakers with the information they need to achieve consistent, reliable results in their baking endeavors.
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To make the idea a reality, Linda reached out to experienced IT professionals she worked with in the past who also shared her passion for baking and vision for creating a tool that would automate tedious tasks to help free up creativity.
As they began building and testing the first version of the tool, they quickly realized that there were too many factors that could impact a recipe, making it difficult to apply concrete rules consistently to all recipes. Determined to find a solution, Linda turned to spreadsheets to analyze recipe data and discovered that these traditional tools were cumbersome and ineffective for recipe analysis. The team reconvened and reached out to professional and avid bakers to discuss revisions to their idea. They found what was needed is a tool that would help bakers leverage their own experience and recipe testing methods, along with baking science, to improve known recipes and create new ones. They also needed a way for bakers to capture their own hypotheses and conduct experiments to test and refine their recipes.
So, the Baking Lab Notebook was born. This innovative tool provides bakers with a powerful platform to capture and analyze data about their recipes, combine that with ingredient data and baking rules, and apply the data to improve their baking knowledge and skills. With the help of this tool, bakers can take their experiments to create truly exceptional baked goods.
The Baking Lab Notebook Timeline
Design and build a web application to automate baking rules in recipe development
Jan 2021
Test first prototype
with 100s of recipes
Aug 2021
Test the improved
prototype with users and recipes
July 2022
Launch Beta version
for bakers to use
Sept 2023
May 2021
Oct 2021
Aug 2022
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Interview users for feedback on first prototype
Revise prototype based on feedback and recipe data
Build Beta version of the Baking Lab Notebook
The Founding Team
Linda Brudz
CEO & Head of Product
Linda is a professionally trained pastry chef who has honed her craft at premier restaurants in France, Boston, and New York City before owning and operating a dessert catering business for 7 years. She also has over 15 years experience as a technology project and product manager at Fortune 100 companies as well as startups, ushering forth products that bring mission and vision into reality.
Stephen Brudz
Chief Technology Officer
Steve is an engineering leader with over 20 years experience in full-stack software development, architecture, agile coaching, and team building. He's led teams in building mission-critical software systems for a variety of industries, ranging from scientific data management for the Broad Institute to television scheduling software for HBO to MVPs for fledgling startups.
Jelani Harris
Director Data Engineering
Jelani is a full-stack software developer with 13 years of professional experience building performant and scaleable data-intensive applications for the telecom, manufacturing, healthcare, education, and financial industries. With a fascination for machine learning and accessible datasets, he's eager to build robust data models to reveal game-changing metrics and insights. He also embraces his nocturnal nature and regularly makes cookies at 3 am.
Zina Schroeder
Director UX Engineering
Zina is a full-stack software developer with a passion for technological usability, interface aesthetics and baked goods. Over her 10+ years in web development she has worn many hats, from designer to lead developer, and has spent the past 5 years working to craft custom web applications for clients across a multitude of industries. When not in front of a computer, she can be found attempting to perfect her macaronage technique.