A domain name might seem like an unusual birthday gift for a high school student. But for Erica Pais ’17, it was a prescient present. Since age 11, Pais had been a practiced and passionate baker. Her mom thought of the perfect name for her daughter’s potential future baking business, and her dad nabbed the domain name: Paistries.com.
In August 2020, as Pais pivoted her career amid the pandemic, she launched her website where anyone, anywhere can schedule Zoom baking classes with her. In addition, customers in Philadelphia and beyond can order her baked goods for delivery. “I was destined to be a baker,” she says.
As a Colgate first-year, Pais’ supplies looked distinctly different from other students’. She filled her giant pink hamper with whisks, spatulas, and cookie sheets. “I was determined to find a kitchen somewhere,” she says. “A couple of times a week, through snow or whatever weather, I would lug my supplies from Center Stillman to the ALANA Cultural Center, where there was a big, open kitchen. I would bake for fun, giving stuff out to my friends studying for exams.”
Taking her avocation to the next level, she participated in the Thought Into Action Incubator and launched Baking Connections as a sophomore. This popular series of cooking classes — which she taught until graduation — invited students and Hamilton residents to bake together.
Pais started working during her senior year at the newly opened Flour & Salt bakery, where owner Britty Buonocore ’12, MA’13 O’Connor became her mentor. Upon graduation, Pais worked in New York City as a catering relationship manager while taking baking jobs on the side. She taught guests from around the world how to make edible cookie dough at DŌ, a popular confectionary. “It solidified for me that I love teaching other people to bake,” she says.
Ready to leap full-time into the restaurant business, she moved in with friends in Philadelphia and took a bussing job at Zahav, a lauded Israeli restaurant. But this was March 2020. She worked just two weeks before being let go due to the pandemic.
After binge-watching “every baking show in existence,” Pais started selling her baked goods through friends and social media. “I took over every inch of our apartment, except my roommates’ bedrooms, with cookies cooling and packing stations,” she says.
When she and her roommates moved over the summer, Pais gave double chocolate chunk cookies and cardamon oat cookies with cinnamon glaze to her new neighbors as her calling card. Once one neighbor raved about Pais’ caramelized onion and tomato galette on the Nextdoor app, orders poured in by email. “It was a huge turning point,” she says.
After eight years as merely an idea, Paistries.com went live in August 2020 with private and group Zoom baking classes. “Everyone was tired of just staring at each other over Zoom; a baking class was a fun activity they could do together online,” she says. This fall, she’ll once again teach classes in person, bringing friends and family together in their homes to bake.
The website also serves as a storefront for ordering Pais’ delectable baked goods, including chocolate crinkle cookies, snickerdoodle blondies, and pumpkin chocolate-chip muffins, her Bubbie Mollie’s specialty.
“Baking for others is special to me because I get to be part of their life, often for a special celebration,” she says. “But teaching others to bake is fun because I am empowering people to do something they didn’t realize they could do. When they eat what we baked together and I ask how it is, they say, ‘It’s amazing!’ It’s so rewarding when they feel so proud of themselves.”