Sara Sarasohn has been living in the same Berkeley home for 20 years, rarely meeting any of her neighbors. That all changed about a month ago when the journalist and podcast editor signed up for the Baking Notification Project. Now she sits in the sun on the porch of her 100-year-old bungalow, waiting for 25 new friends and neighbors to arrive. They’re all there to collect a leftover share of Sarasohn’s lemon cake with honey frosting, one of many favorite recipes she distributes weekly via the app.
Launched in October, 2021, the Baking Notification Project connects the people craving cosmic brownies, cherry chocolate crostata, and everything bagels with the home bakers racking them up. Jessica Morrison, who lives in Nashville, came up with the idea last year while baking her first batch of pain au chocolat. She’d left her job at a chemical engineering magazine a month earlier to stay home with her new baby and had become obsessed with baking. And like many people socially distancing but cooking up a storm, she would always end up with far too much of the final product. So Morrison teamed up with her software developer husband to design and build the Baking Notification Project.
What began as a way for Morrison to share the excess food she had has steadily spread, with more than 100 subscribers across five states using the app. The concept is simple: Each baker can cook whenever and whatever they like but all must agree to follow their state’s cottage food laws, which can involve using ingredient labels and securing food handling certifications. After a free month of beta testing to figure out the quirks, bakers pay a monthly fee of $25 and can charge their “customers” up to $10 a month to access the goods, though some like Sarasohn offer their subscription for free. The only hitch for subscribers? There needs to be a home baker in your local area for you to access the goods.
While the app was intended as a grassroots community offering, some bakers with large social followings have reaped surprising rewards. Nashville-based recipe developer and food blogger Melissa Fallon started selling the treats she had leftover from TikTok shoots in March, 2022, after some of her 300,000-plus followers kept asking her what she did with them. Fallon made a video packaging some treats for the Baking Notification Project and says people started messaging her to nab them immediately.
Meanwhile, for subscribers, random notifications that baked goods are ready offer a sense of surprise and delight. Lane Scott Jones, who lives in Nashville, looks forward to the random texts telling her what a baker has available and when she can collect the goods. “It’s a welcome break in the middle of the day,” she says, and not knowing when the message is going to come only adds to the experience.
All bakers require their goods to be picked up, usually from their front yards or porches. And even these quick exchanges have created a strong sense of community amid rampant isolation. “I don’t have daily touch points that make me feel like part of the city,” says Jones, who works remotely. “When I subscribed, it felt like this rare chance to connect in a physical, material way with my neighborhood.”
For Eric Burdullis, one of Morrrison’s recent subscribers, his weekly haul offers more than just a sweet treat. “The pandemic has separated us in so many ways—whether it’s been our restaurants and community centers shutting down for extended periods of time, or differences of opinions politically,” he says. “This service is one incredible way to reconnect through food with those around us. I can be midway through my fourth Zoom call of the day and I get a text asking if I want a glitter rainbow croissant. How does your day not get better after that?”
Back in Berkley, Sarasohn has been peddling her chocolate chip banana cake and strawberry sandwich cookies on the app since April, 2022. Originally, she signed up as a creative outlet and a way to make sure the food she’s baking every week will be eaten. But decades after she first moved in, it’s also helped her feel more embedded in her community.
“There’s one man who lives just around the corner from me and comes almost every time I send a notification,” Sarahson says. “We’ve had really good conversations about the neighborhood, raising teenagers, and what’s going on in his life. It’s important to me to connect with my neighbors; to feel like we’re not alone [in this life].”