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Photo by Hudi Greenberger
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After moving to St. Louis a year ago, Giti Fredman launched Just Bake It, which offers baking classes and workshops for corporate events, birthday parties, and other special events.
The Concept
Photo by Hudi Greenberger
Just Bake It offers baking classes and workshops, both remotely and in person. Fredman designs the experiences specifically for customers, who can choose from challahs, cinnamon buns, bagels, and babkas. They start with a kit—made to include the exact amounts of flour, sugar, salt, and yeast—and then add water, oil, and eggs.
Fredman incorporates lessons and other experiences along the way. For instance, when Fredman hosts corporate events, she might share lessons about how each part of a team must come together, similar to the ingredients for a challah: The sugar represents kind words, the salt is constructive criticism, the yeast builds people up, the eggs are new ideas, and the oil is about making things possible. All of these ingredients combine to create a successful product.
“We use baking as a tool to bring people together," Fredman explains. "We provide the ingredients, and we want people to get to know each other while learning something new."
The Background
Photo by Hudi Greenberger
When Fredman was growing up, she recalls, her mother hid her mixer because the school's principal said she was spending too much time baking and not enough time on schoolwork. Eight years later, her principal hired her to bake a birthday cake. “Everyone was given a gift, and there comes a time when we should embrace who we are and what we’re good at,” Fredman says. “This is my superpower.”
At first, Fredman baked cakes and cookies with fondants and other fancy decorations. Over time, she also fine-tuned her challahs, after learning that the braided egg bread needed plenty of time to rise. “A fancy cake or cookie has to be perfect,” she says, "but a challah doesn’t have to be perfect, just delicious."
In fact, before moving to St. Louis, Fredman worked for a nonprofit in Minneapolis that hosted challah bakes, and she taught people how to make the bread. “I couldn’t hold enough of the classes,” she says. "Everybody just wanted to learn how to make bread."
Her ultimate goal is for the business to be successful enough that she can donate her time and resources to teaching classes to prisons, shelters, and special schools.
“It’s not just someone in their kitchen Googling or watching a YouTube or an Instagram reel,” Fredman says of her classes. “It’s sharing a new experience together and learning something.”
