Julia Vargas is a sophomore majoring in Mathematics from Brooklyn, N.Y. Using the popular student app Sidechat to gauge interest, her sourdough business quickly exploded in popularity and is now taking orders on Instagram: @sidechatsourdough. Some of the options offered include rosemary, jalapeno cheddar and pesto mozzarella.
The News-Letter: How did the business get started?
Julia Vargas: During quarantine, since there was nothing else to do, I really got into baking cakes from scratch. But baking cakes is very hard and it's very precise, so I gave up on baking cakes after a while. I got into cooking before college because I just wanted to make sure I knew how to cook before coming to college. I learned how to make sourdough… because my mom knows someone who makes sourdough. So whenever I'm home, we always have sourdough on hand. [However,] when I come to college, I just don't have access to fresh sourdough. I was like, “I really miss it.” So I learned how to make my own. Then, I started making it for my friends. I really had fun making sourdough; I just made a Sidechat post [this January]. First I asked if $8 would be a reasonable price. [After getting] a lot of positive feedback on that post, I made another post [that said], “DM me for homemade sourdough.” Eventually it turned into an Instagram account because I was getting too many DMs on Sidechat.
Now that I have an Instagram, I feel a lot more established. I always wanted to make an Instagram account for my business, but I wanted to wait until more people knew about it. I kind of made the identity for myself as the Sidechat sourdough person. I was worried at the beginning that people might not have trusted it because, personally, I wouldn't really want to buy food from someone off Sidechat. But now, seeing how more people have bought it and posted [their sourdough] on Sidechat, I think more people trust [the business] a little bit more.
N-L: How does the day-to-day operations of the business look like?
JV: I have a very busy week, so I pretty much just sell on the weekends and make huge batches on Friday nights. I live in a dorm, so there’s not a big space to work with, and the oven is really tiny, so it is a little bit difficult, but I'm still happy to do it. In terms of setting prices, I was afraid to start selling it at $8 because I felt like not a lot of people would buy it if it was that high. So I started selling it at $6. Then eventually the demand got really high and people who were buying it were telling me to increase my prices. I was like, “Okay, people are going to keep buying it, so let me just increase the price to $8,” and I sell different options as well. The cost varies on the flavor and ingredients… I started getting bags of flour from Costco because they [sell] 12 pounds of flour [per bag while local] grocery stores only sell five pounds of flour [per bag]. If somebody wants specific inclusions, I'll just go to any local grocery store and get those.
N-L: What is one flavor that blindsided you with its popularity, and what is one that isn’t as popular as you thought it would be?
JV: One flavor that is really popular that I was surprised by was rosemary. Somebody had asked me if I could include rosemary. I have never made a rosemary loaf before, [but] I was like, “Sure,” so I got the rosemary. Then, they made a post saying that they got a rosemary loaf. Afterwards, I got so many DMs asking me for rosemary. I never even tried it myself, but yeah, it’s a very popular flavor. One that I thought was going to be more popular was definitely jalapeno cheddar. Maybe my algorithm is a bit biased, but on Tiktok, all I see is jalapeno cheddar sourdough loaves… But I haven't really sold too many jalapeno cheddar. I sold some, but not a lot.
N-L: In your experience, what makes a good loaf of sourdough?
JV: This is a hard question for me. I think the rise is very important, and how the cross-section looks when you cut it inside because sometimes it can look very airy and just have so many holes in it. People have their different preferences, but I personally like it when there's not too many large holes inside the bread and [it] is more like a sandwich bread. Whenever I sell my loaves, I always try to bake it very close to when somebody's picking it up so that they can get a fresh loaf that's, like, crunchy because I also really like it when the crust is crunchy and warm, with [the] inside very soft — that's definitely what I prefer.
N-L: What’s your baking philosophy?
JV: What matters to me is that people enjoy the bread. That's the reason why I do it. I just love seeing people's positive reactions, and it just really motivates me to keep going. All I really care about and all I really want is for people to just enjoy it.
N-L: How do you choose new flavors?
JV: Sometimes I look at my For You page [on TikTok] and I'll just see a sourdough flavor [that makes me think], “Oh, I should try that.” Or sometimes, if I'm bored at work, I'll literally just look up sourdough flavors. That's how I [found] pesto mozzarella. Sometimes, people just ask me if I can add certain things. One time, somebody asked me if I could add asiago cheese, and somebody [else] asked if I could add chocolate chips. So it’s a combination of people asking me for specific inclusions, just seeing it on Tiktok or looking it up online.
N-L: What future steps do you plan to take with the business?
JV: I definitely do want to keep selling on Instagram. I'm always happy to take any suggestions. [One customer] mentioned that they want to do a bulk order. I [might] expand [to include] a catering option. I don't really have plans to continue selling sourdough once I'm not in college anymore.
