The story about how I came to live in Dexter, Michigan

My family and I moved to Dexter, MI in July, 2017. The story of how we made it here is a little bit complicated…

My love for Michigan

Michigan is home for me. I grew up in West Bloomfield, MI and my parents instilled in me (and my siblings) a true love for the University of Michigan. All I ever wanted to do growing up was to swim for Michigan, and go the the Olympics, of course! I was able to realize one of those dreams and earned a scholarship to swim for the Wolverines. However, I fell a little short of making the olympic team (I only missed by 27 places!). I was able to finish my swimming career in 2004 and graduate with a couple degrees from the school of engineering.

My swimming career may have been over, but my academic one was not. I continued my education and ended with a doctorate in Materials Science and Engineering in 2010. Without a doubt, the best part of getting my Ph.D. was meeting my husband, Alex, who was getting his doctorate in Nuclear Engineering. After we graduated, we had to leave Michigan for work and headed on our first adventure.

A cross-country move

My husband and I got post-doc appointments at Los Alamos National Laboratory in New Mexico so we packed up and moved away from family and friends to try our hands at some exciting research opportunities. This is where we had our first son, which changed my career aspirations entirely. We unfortunately had some complications at birth, namely he was born about 1 month early. This required a 3 week stint in the NICU. When we were finally able to bring him home, I knew I didn’t want to go back to work – I wanted to stay with the newest member of our family. Thankfully, we were able to make that work and I became a stay at home mom, which to be honest, has been much more challenging than my work was at the lab!

While I was at home with our son, I began looking more closely at what we were eating. We had gone from Ann Arbor, where good bread was easy to find, to Los Alamos, where the only bread offerings were at the grocery store. I had a bit more time on my hands (at least during naps) so I started experimenting with cooking and baking and I realized how much I enjoyed it. This is really when my bread story began.

Next stop, Tennessee

New Mexico is absolutely beautiful, I would recommend visiting in a heartbeat, but it was just too far away from our families. Now that I was staying home with a little one, I wanted to be as close to family as possible. Unfortunately, my husband’s degree didn’t really have any options near either of our families, however, it did allow us to move to Knoxville, Tennessee, which got us closer. Alex started work at Oak Ridge National Lab and at the University of Tennessee. We thought we had found our place and bought a house to put down some roots. In this house was where I was able to actually keep a starter alive (something I had trouble with in New Mexico) and even got decent at making bread. At least my neighbors were happy to receive a loaf as gifts. Although, Alex kept asking me to make him regular sandwich bread instead of sourdough for his lunches!

A drastic career change

That worked well for about the first 6 months. It was clear that the work Alex was doing was not what he had hoped it would be. Close to the time I got pregnant with our second child, Alex told me that he didn’t think he wanted to be a nuclear engineer anymore. Okay…that could make things interesting.

We had a long discussion about what he wanted to do and what we should do – he still had about a year and a half left on his contract. It turns out that my super smart science guy actually wanted to be an author! Not what I had expected, but I was supportive and we found a way to made it work. He finished out his contract obligations during the day and wrote at night and on the weekends. We saved as best we could for us so we could have a nest egg to pay the bills once his work at the lab was up. Thankfully, nuclear engineers get paid decently, so we were in a pretty good spot to take the plunge.

So did it work?

Alex decided to self-publish and had been writing full-time for about 4 months when one of his books took off. It was the first one is a series that ended up with 10 books! (It’s called Red Hot Steele by Alex P. Berg in case you’re interested – you can check it out here). He was so successful that neither of us had to worry about going back to work at the lab but we stuck around Tennessee just in case this whole writing thing didn’t work out. After 3 years of writing full-time it became clear that he was talented enough to make this a real career. It got me thinking…if I’m staying at home with the kids and he works from home, why aren’t we living even closer to family? Neither one of us could come up with a good answer to that question so in July, 2017 we moved to Dexter, MI. Now we live in the same town as my two of my sisters and soon my parents plan to be living here as well.

But what about the bread?

Unfortunately, my Tennessee starter did not make the trip. However, I was able to use everything I had learned in the previous 7 years and got a starter up and running in about 4 weeks. The starter I use for all my breads is the same one I started when I moved here – 100% Dexter grown! There must be something in the air here, because the bread made with this starter has better flavor of any I had ever made in Tennessee.

I absolutely love living in Dexter. It’s close to family, close to the University of Michigan, but still has a small town charm that makes me feel like I’m a part of a community. I feel privileged to be able to offer my bread at the local market, and hope to continue well into the future!