Everything You Need To Know
How I Got Started - Bakery Studio Plans - This Newsletter - Youtube
Hi, thanks for being here. Hope you’re having a great day.
For this first post, I wanted to give a full run down of everything that you need to know about By Jiyoon— from the beginnings of how I got started to how things are going now to what you can expect going forward. This one’s a longer one so feel free to skip around different sections. Let’s get into it.
How I Got Started
During the start of the pandemic in 2020, I was just graduated from college and lived at my parents home during the quarantine period. Like a lot of us during that confusing time, I was trying to figure out what I wanted to do with my life and had a lot of free time to do just that. I found myself in an endless rabbit hole of baking & cooking videos, recipe blogs and articles. I consumed a lot of Bon Appetit (before all the controversy), Joshua Weissman,
of The Perfect Loaf, Cooking Tree and more. I started experimenting with any recipe that interested me— from Korean makgeolli rice wine to biang biang noodles to black sesame cinnamon rolls to sourdough starter. Out of all the random things I made— that starter changed things for me.As a former athlete [I played golf competitively for 8 years]— I’ve always enjoyed working with my hands and finding ways to challenge myself. Looking back, I think sourdough was the perfect outlet for me to really learn about the meticulous and sensitive nature of baking while also giving me a creative outlet to experiment and explore. I made two sourdough loaves every weekend for my family— tweaking and experimenting with each week. Sourdough taught me the foundational skills and knowledge of baking— measuring, mixing, dough feel, temperature variability, shaping, troubleshooting and more. It all started with sourdough and from there, I kept learning and filling my creative cup through other recipes.
Here are my first loaves. Yes, sourdough made me that happy.
For about 9 months at home, I consumed food content morning til night and taught myself everything I was curious to learn in the kitchen. Early on in this process— I also got interested in food photography and decided to share what I was making on Instagram @by_jiyoon. I’ll make a future post highlighting everything I made during this time.
My first bakery job
Around the 8 month mark at home— I knew I wanted to try to pursue baking as a career. I felt the itch to learn in a professional bakery and get my foot in the door. I started applying to bakeries all over in Los Angeles, New York and the Bay Area. I ended up landing a phone interview with Clark Street Bakery in Echo Park, LA and we scheduled my stage [a working interview] for the following week. My sister, cousin and I drove 2 hours to LA in the middle of the night for my 4am stage and I left that shift with a position on their pastry team. Right after my shift, I had 6 apartment viewings lined up and ended up signing my lease the same day. I moved to LA the following week and started working a couple days later.
Working at Clark Street— I learned so much about pastry but more importantly I was able to learn about my workflow and efficiency in the kitchen. I continued baking & experimenting with flavors I was interested in on my off days and continued sharing my photography & baking on my Instagram. After a while, I grew a small demand for my pastries and decided to do my first pastry box drop. It ended up selling out so I took on that opportunity & continued with my pastry box drops whenever I could. After 7 months— I left Clark Street and decided to pursue my own work full-time.
And now we’re here
I’ve learned a lot and still am figuring everything out as I go. Creative work is difficult but my intention is to create in a free and genuine way without rigid boundaries getting in the way of that. I’m grateful to be able to create & share my work with you— so thank you for supporting me & allowing me to do just that.
Bakery Studio Plans
Here’s everything happening with the bakery at the moment.
How to Order
I’ve opened my site for general orders. Pastries are available in small batches and new items will get added periodically. August + September books are open so head here to view the menu & place your order: by-jiyoon.com/order
Please email me for catering or special events. Unfortunately, I don’t ship at the moment. It’s a possibility in the future though so let me know if you’d like that.
Popups
I’ll be doing more popups around LA! Here’s the upcoming schedule:
8/26 Co-Mrkt Popup at Yoboseyo Superette in Little Tokyo
9/16 Thank You Coffee in Anaheim | OC POPUP
9/23 Capsule Perfumerie in Chinatown
More dates TBA
My future goal is to collab with shops + popup in the Bay, NY and other cities!
Do you want a pastry class?
I’d love to make this happen. I could teach you how to build milk cream buns. We could fill + decorate some tarts together. Anything! Let me know if there’s interest & I’ll do what I can to make it happen this year!
What To Expect From This Newsletter
First of all, thank you for subscribing and reading. I really appreciate it.
I wanted to create a newsletter in order to share more of my work and process & connect with you all on a more personal level. Here’s what to expect:
Weekly
The newsletter will be posted weekly on Monday or Tuesday.
Recipes!
Yes, I’ll finally be sharing my recipes with you! I know a lot of you don’t live in LA and therefore, don’t have access to my pastries at all— I don’t love that. What I really want is to create more freely and to share my process & the recipe with you. I would love for you to make my recipes at home instead of only looking at photos of pastries that I post. Expect current and new pastry recipes on here— as well as more casual + savory recipes like my breakfasts or staple meals I eat at home. My goal is to post at least one new recipe a month.
The only caveat— all posts with recipes will be for paid subscribers only. A lot of work goes into creating a recipe so I hope you understand. It’s only $5/ month— thank you for supporting in advance!
Thoughts - Stories - Recs
This newsletter will be the space for me to share my thoughts around food and creative work in a more in depth way. I’ll share things like—
my recipe development + creative process
business insights + what I’m learning
my favorite food spots around LA + other places I travel
kitchen tools + recommendations
etc
Let me know if there are any topics you’d like to see covered!
Youtube
If you didn’t know, I make visual bakery studio vlogs on Youtube. It’s a newer thing but I’ve been really enjoying the long form structure & being able to be creative in a different way. Thanks for watching if you do.
Here’s a new one I posted today: A Busy Week | Bakery Studio Visual Vlog
Thank you for reading,
JIYOON
I only recently learned that you had a YouTube channel and a newsletter -- your videos are very soothing, and I enjoyed reading about how you got your start as a baker. Hope to make it to one of your pop-ups one day, especially if you have any in the Bay Area in the future.
classes would be so fun, love that you're here blogging this is the besttttt