For today’s interview with baker Paola Velez, I enlisted my colleague, Holly Haines, to join me as co-host. Paola and Holly are both extremely experienced, extremely experimental, and extremely talented bakers, and they already knew each other, so I was pretty sure it would be a good time.
And it was. I’m sure that when I listen back to this interview, I’ll seem like the dorky kid who’s not in on the joke, because these two ladies know baking like I know my bed at 9pm on a weeknight.
Paola got her start working with both Jacques Torres and Christina Tosi, but it was only a matter of time before she became a success in her own right. When she started baking, she began trusting her instincts almost immediately, adjusting classic recipes to make them her own, like a sticky bun with ripe plantains, Chocolate Malta Cake, and Mango and Brown Butter Blondies. You’ll find all those recipes in her cookbook, Bodega Bakes, a 2025 James Beard Award winner.
Paola is also the founder of Bakers Against Racism, which I trust most of you have heard about, an organization that’s raised almost $3m for social justice causes worldwide. We talked about that, and about baking, of course, and about Paola’s husband, Hector, who indirectly gave her her start as a baker. Get a few of Paola’s recipes here (Chocolate Malta Cake), here (PB&J Pots de Crème, and here (The Lemon Cookie).
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