August 27, 2024 – Danielle Orlando is the kind of baker who loves to make elaborate desserts. She is at ease plating those beautiful creations you can only get on tasting menus at the finest restaurants, the kind you can’t even fathom making in your home kitchen. The Culinary Institute of America-trained pastry chef worked in restaurant kitchens for the past 15 years, with stints in some of the top San Francisco spots and as head of pastry at The Ritz-Carlton, Half Moon Bay.
But despite loving her job and what she was crafting, there was something missing for her in that work. “I was at the top of the ladder, but ultimately I chose to do something more collaborative,” she explains about when she decided to branch out and create her own baking business. “I was interested in bringing in the community. I had been working the back of house for so long, never seeing the smiles on customers’ faces when they were eating my food, so that was the missing piece for me. Food is so soulful, and I wanted to share that.”
So she quit and launched a wildly popular sourdough brioche donut business pre-pandemic at farmers markets in and around Half Moon Bay. The donut endeavor segued into what some of you may recognize as Dani O & Co.—a Soquel-based online bakery that offers sourdough bread, English muffins and cookies, with some special treats available from time to time. In the beginning, the business was her chance to showcase her burgeoning sourdough skills, more than just the donuts (everyone always wanted those no matter what).
When COVID hit, Orlando took a break from baking. She pivoted, got a real estate license, had a baby, went through a divorce…all the major life events that still happened amidst a major pandemic. But she couldn’t stop thinking about Dani O & Co.
“I can’t shake the baker and I don’t want to!” she realized. As she got back into the routine of baking for weekly pickups, special orders and pop-ups almost every weekend, she realized that something else had shifted for her, which connected back to her initial decision to leave the restaurant world in search of more connection and community.
Now Orlando has created Dani O Bakeshop, a health-forward bakery opening August 31 in a 690-square-foot space inside the food court at the Capitola Mall. She has designed a fun vintage vibe for the bakery, located near all the other mom and pop vendors in the food court, somewhat unique for a mall. That collaborative, community minded feeling is back for Orlando at the bakery, where she has created a menu of items using no refined sugars, no seed oils, all non-GMO ingredients and organic, seasonal produce as much as possible.
“I really wanted to call out that we aren’t using refined sugars, we are using stoneground, organic flour and salt that is actually pink. Coconut sugar is the base of our recipes and it has half the glycemic index. I see that difference when I give it to my 4 year old,” Orlando says.
It is a full circle moment for her, an opportunity to showcase her past experience paired with some of the lessons that came along with the ride of the last few years. The online bakery still exists for weekly pickup, and she has branched out to offer wholesale goods to restaurants as well as pastry chef consulting services, developing recipes with ingredients in set containers and training cooks on the line to bake the products for their menus.
The brick-and-mortar will not only offer all of Orlando’s tempting baked goods, but also items like egg in a hole toasts and French toast with maple sugar. Over the span of her career, she has developed several base recipes that can change with the season, such as the gluten-free upside down cake recipe she shares with us below.
“It is all about whatever I find that inspires me,” she says. “We have the best agriculture here and I want to use it!”
Grand Opening takes place Saturday, August 31 at 2pm at Capitola Mall, 1855 41st Ave. Capitola | daniobakeshop.com
About the author
Amber Turpin is a freelance food and travel writer based in the Santa Cruz Mountains.
