By: Abigail Woods
Heidi Kizer, a local of Huntsville, Alabama, has proven that no small business comes without its challenges.
“You can take things from nothing, broken down little dust particles and you can build them up and make beautiful things,” Kizer said, who opened The Bakingtist, a self-described “microbakery.”
The creation of a small business and the life Kizer led prior to the opening of The Bakingtist was paved with struggle, perseverance and hardship.
Born in Heidelberg, Germany, Kizer grew up in a military family, which meant she moved often in her childhood years. Her father worked for the U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs, a position which transferred Kizer and her family around the world.
From Germany, she then moved to Wyoming, then Arizona and ended up in Amarillo, Texas, the town she described as her hometown because she spent most of her formative years there.
“My mom’s family is all from Texas and so that would make me essentially an 8th generation Texan,” Kizer said.
After finishing high school in Amarillo, Kizer went on to attend the University of Texas at Austin where she earned a degree in biochemistry, a subject that she “loved so much.”
Kizer met her husband on the first day of college, and they remained together throughout the coming years until they were able to marry at the end of their time at the university.
While Kizer assures she adored her degree, she said she had a hard time accepting that the program at University of Texas at Austin was mainly rooted in health science.
“I was so burnt out by senior year, and it was tricky because I like the science, but I don’t want to be a doctor or a pharmacist or do health research,” she said.
She said that the environment was seeing a decline at the time in which she earned her degree.
“There was this thought that people don’t care about climate change and so I was at the conclusion that I was going to change the world with math and science,” she said with a laugh.
Following graduation, Kizer and her husband picked up and moved to Atlanta where her husband would earn his graduate degree at Georgia Tech. Because of this move, Kizer also decided to apply to the university and was accepted to join a graduate research assistantship, a position which was all paid for in the environmental and engineering field at the school.
After that experience, Kizer went into an environmental engineering firm for consulting and said, “that was miserable.”
Then, suddenly and unexpectedly, Kizer lost her mother “in a very tragic and traumatic way.” Following this event, she explained she then began reading baking science textbooks.
“I started baking, and it kind of built my life back up from ashes and being destroyed and losing my mom, and I jumped into farmers markets,” Kizer said. “So then we moved to [Los Angeles] and then back to Austin and then finally Huntsville in 2019.”
Now, a regular vendor at the farmers market in MidCity District, Kizer explained that bringing her business to farmers markets across the country has been “a complete and utter hustle; it is so much work.”
Kizer, in her fifth year of doing farmers markets, said she believes they are the best way to get to know the side of the community that’s wanting to support local, small businesses such as hers. She described the markets as “a little incubator for tiny businesses, so they can figure out what they’re doing and people can start to know their names.”
Helen Blue Parache, a customer of Kizer’s, has been purchasing goods from The Bakingtist for a year and a half. She began coming when she was pregnant with her son and was recommended by a friend to purchase cookies from Kizer to curb pregnancy cravings. “Heidi is amazing and [I] really appreciate her combination of science and creativity in her passion for baking,” Parache said.
When comparing the farmers market in MidCity to the others she has participated in, Kizer noted that the people running the markets in the Huntsville community are “freaking awesome.”
Kizer brought up her love for the executive director of MidCity District Association, Lindsey Pattillo. Not only is Pattillo on top of emails and checking on every person at the market inside The Camp, but she also organizes everything and ensures the event runs smoothly.
Kizer recalled the holiday market in which Pattillo went above and beyond to serve the community.
“All of us vendors, we were dead after it [the holiday market] and I had so much stuff so it took me hours and hours to break down, so I was the last one and I was just sitting there dehydrated and floating because,” Kizer said. “Far, far away there in the parking lot across from Trader Joes was Lindsey by herself in an empty parking lot going around and picking up tiny pieces of trash. She’s just amazing, she doesn’t get the recognition she deserves.”
After being diagnosed as bipolar, Kizer explained the road to get to where she is today with her baking business was no easy feat.
“I spent like 17 years in sheer misery and denial,” she said. “I even kind of went into the engineering field thinking ‘Engineers are super stable, so if I go into that field I’ll be stable, right?”
After having this back-and-forth battle with herself and trying to determine what she wanted most out of her future, Kizer said she began sinking to a low bottom, so low that she nearly died by suicide.
Following this, Kizer said she was put on medication and has been happily medicated for three years.
While living in Los Angeles, Kizer would frequent the chain restaurant Jimmy John’s.
“They sell their day-old bread, and we were so poor so we would buy it for 40 cents,” she said.
The name “The Bakingtist,” Kizer said, came from her husband, who was the driving force behind her love for baking because it was a hobby that was building her back up from her lowest place.
“He made me a little pink folder and he wrote ‘The Bakingtist’ on the front with a little heart,” Kizer said. “So, I was like ‘Alright, we’re jumping into business.’”
Kizer began by producing all her products in her apartment, which quickly proved to be an inefficient process. This prompted her to jump into a commissary — a shared kitchen — enabling her to increase the volume of her products.
After working alone for some time, Kizer realized she needed to hire employees, a step that she recalled as being very scary. It was through that process she brought on Kalisa Lessnau, a baker at The Bakingtist.
Lessnau said her job entails the overall creation of items on The Bakingtist’s menu such as the famous groundbreaker cookies, pastry cream, hand pies and croissants.
“The best part of working for a company like The Bakingtist is being part of a small, collaborative team with strong communication skills,” Lessnau said. “Being able to ask questions to better understand techniques or work together to improve or invent new recipes is really great.”
For a time after her business began to see success, Kizer said she was commonly asked when she would open a brick-and-mortar store. After going through three brokers, Kizer and her husband have officially signed on a space downtown, formerly known as Below the Radar.
“My husband and I are basically risking our whole lives savings and IRAs and 401(k) [plans] on this,” Kizer said of the downtown space.
From sourdough bread making to groundbreaking cookies, Kizer operates on one phrase and one phrase only, “science, simply, is the beautiful pursuit of discovery.”
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