Cultured Finds a Home for 2023

Fischer has garnered a following for her focaccia, bagels and sourdough loaves. Submitted.

After three years of bouncing around shared kitchens or rental spaces, Mattea Fischer has landed on a permanent place to bake her much-sought-after sourdough, focaccia rounds and rolls. Fischer, who launched Cultured in 2020, has purchased the building that was most recently home to Blackbird Bake Shop on the corner of Highway 57 and County Q.

Her original interest was in fermentation, not baking. She made sauerkraut and kimchi at home, but she caught the baking bug when she started experimenting with yeasted doughs during her winter downtime. 

Fischer started working with sourdough, and by 2019, she was baking out of her home for friends and family. But when the COVID-19 pandemic hit in the spring of 2020, she got laid off from her full-time job. That’s when she figured she might as well give her baking a more serious shot. 

“There’s no better time than now,” she said. 

For the next two years, Fischer baked from wherever she could get space, borrowing kitchen time from Blackbird, then working in the commercial kitchen at NWTC in Sister Bay, the kitchen at Thyme and then for a time the kitchen in the Country Walk Shops. 

She sold through farm markets, pop-ups and pre-orders, but now with a permanent space, she will have a retail space and a small cafe. 

“The plan is changing every day,” Fischer said. “I don’t have an entirely concrete idea, but I expect I’ll have a couple tables, a full bakery and a small menu of sandwiches and drip coffee.”

It will be a welcome relief from the early mornings and long days that were required to supply freshly baked products to morning farm markets. 

Fischer hopes to open the new home of Cultured in May. Until then, find Cultured at the Christkindlmarkt in Sister Bay for the next two weekends, or find Cultureddc on Instagram or Facebook to get details about placing orders.