BTB: Lauren Dinley
This is a tribute to one of our core members at Rye Goods. A ‘thank you’ for all that you’ve helped us grow.
This month’s Behind the Bread is especially near and dear to our hearts. Tomorrow we say farewell and send our best to not just an employee, but a best friend.
Her compassion, humor, and leadership in the kitchen will be missed. All of those early AM shifts, catching up on life, sharing new favorite films and admiring her custom-made fruit jewelry — will be dearly missed. But we have so much to be grateful for and must leave on a positive, upbeat note!
This week we introduce you to,
Lauren Dinley
She is a Lead Pastry Chef, and our second most senior employee sharing 4 and a half years with Rye with over 13 years of experience in the food industry. From a very young age, Lauren had discovered her gift in the kitchen. She is truly a natural. So much so, that we had hired her back in October of 2019 to help make croissants — when she had no experience in that department whatsoever!
“As a kid, I had a lot of ideas on what I wanted to do. By the time I got to middle school, I started to play around with cooking more.”
Growing up, Lauren was encouraged to lean into her creative side. Her mother had always wanted her to do well in school, but also gave her the freedom to make the decision she ultimately wanted. Coupled with an artistic father, Lauren was to follow her passion in culinary.
Her tenacity and dedication in working with seasonal ingredients led her to being a leader at Rye. On top of helping curate our ever-changing pastry menu, she oversees product and ingredient inventory, tests recipes, makes jam, hops in our deli line, and finds time to lend a hand washing dishes.
“A lot of people come into the food industry because they see cool chefs on Instagram and think that it’s awesome and when they get into it, they don’t realize how physical and hard it is.”
You’re either meant to work in this industry or not, and for Lauren, in order to be successful, it takes two things: having a lot of patience and a willingness to work hard. If you can do that, work becomes a fun creative outlet.
What’s Lauren’s favorite thing to create? A few things: creme fraiche panna cotta with seasonal fruit during citrus season, a pavlova with some kind of tangy curd and whipped cream topped with seasonal fruit (if plums/pluots are in season), and lemon curd (she invented our lemon curd morning buns) — all of which are what she’d bring to a dinner party! Pastry skills aside, it’s her personality that helps maintain balance in our kitchen.
“…caring and empathetic. If you have these qualities, that’s what brings people back and keeps people around.”
Lauren has helped us maintain our ethos of honoring not just food but people. We hope to continue her standard of integrity and compassion in the kitchen as she moves on to her next chapter. To close our one-on-one, we asked Lauren what’s on the horizon for her career. Apparently her answer is not so far from most others in that she is still unsure, but that she will forever keep her mind and heart open to new possibilities.
Though you’ll be traveling to Portugal, Norway and eventually Italy - we hope your fun adventure is exciting, enjoyable and never-ending. Thank you for all you’ve done for us!
