About Songbird Sourdough

For as long as I can remember, I’ve been making things with my hands.

Before there was flour on my apron, there were flowers.

I graduated from Bristol County Agricultural High School in 1990, but my floral career actually started at sixteen through the school’s Floriculture program. What began as a requirement turned into more than 35 years in the floral industry, including years spent working in some of the most beautiful, high-end shops in Newport and Bristol, Rhode Island.

I learned from talented designers. I worked incredible weddings. I learned color, texture, movement, balance, seasonality, and the importance of the tiniest details.

I also learned something else:

I don’t particularly enjoy staying inside someone else’s box.

So eventually, I smashed the damn box.

In 2016, I started Songbird Floral Designs because I wanted to create differently. I didn’t want every bride carrying someone else’s bouquet or every wedding looking like the one before it. I wanted to listen to people, figure out what they saw in their heads, and turn that vision into something beautiful, natural, unexpected, and completely their own.

And I thought flowers would be my story.

Then came bread.

What started as a personal search for real sourdough quickly became an obsession. I wanted the stuff people talked about when they talked about sourdough: long fermentation, incredible flavor, beautiful texture, simple ingredients, and bread made the way bread is supposed to be made.

What I kept finding instead were shortcuts.

Commercial yeast added to speed things along. “Artisan” stamped on products that had been rushed through fermentation. Sourdough becoming a marketing word instead of a process.

That wasn’t what I wanted.

So I decided to make my own.

I got a starter, baked my first loaf, and promptly fell straight down the sourdough rabbit hole.

I read. I studied. I experimented. I failed. I adjusted. I baked again. I learned fermentation, flour, hydration, temperature, timing, grain, structure, and all the tiny variables that can turn flour, water, salt, and starter into something extraordinary.

And somewhere along the way, the woman who had spent her life surrounded by flowers became completely consumed by flour.

Songbird Sourdough was born.

Today, my bakery is built around the same philosophy that built Songbird Floral Designs: quality matters, details matter, ingredients matter, and I have absolutely no interest in making something mediocre simply because it would be faster or easier.

I don’t bake basic bread.

I bake bread with personality.

Real sourdough. Long fermentation. Quality ingredients. Big flavors. Unexpected combinations. Beautiful crusts. Soft crumbs. And absolutely no apologies for doing things a little differently.

Because I’ve never been particularly good at following rules just because someone decided they were rules.

Songbird has grown faster and bigger than I ever imagined, and I am incredibly grateful to every person who has stood at my table, carried home a loaf, told a friend, came back the next week, or trusted me to feed their family.

Feeding people means something to me.

It always has.

Bread is one of the simplest foods in the world, but when it is made with intention, patience, and a little bit of rebellion, there is nothing simple about it.

From flower to flour, Songbird has always been about creating something worth remembering.

Welcome to Songbird Sourdough.

Come hungry.