Sarah Dodge ’04 believes there is magic in good ingredients and old school baking methods, magic that can make us healthier and happier. A baker, pastry chef, and teacher, Dodge operates the local delivery and wholesale bakery Bread is Good, and she’s set to open a brick and mortar location, Colette Bread, in the Poncey-Highland neighborhood of Atlanta.

After graduating from the University of Georgia with a psychology degree, Dodge started graduate school for mental health counseling. She had been baking in her spare time, and while a grad student, got a job in a bakery. “I became energized by the potential of looking at the correlation between mental health and nutrition,” she said. She decided to leave graduate school and focus on baking full-time. “From there I worked for different bakeries and amazing chefs and bakers, just learning and growing,” she said. After working for some of Atlanta’s best chefs and bakeries, including Holeman & Finch Bread and Little Tart Bakeshop, she began experimenting on her own at Octopus Bar, Preserving Place, and other pop ups in the city and around the country. In 2018, she started Bread is Good LLC, out of a commercial kitchen in Inman Park, for wholesale and retail pastry and bread sales. At the time of this writing, she was working toward the late 2022 opening of Colette Bread, her first production kitchen and cooking school, in Otto’s Apartment Hotel (formerly Highland Inn). The business is named for her favorite author, the 20th century French writer Sidonie-Gabrielle Colette. Dodge and guest chefs will offer culinary classes on everything from baking to knife skills and cocktails, and she hopes to open to the public occasionally to offer baked breads and pastries. She’s interested in creating innovative recipes using quality ingredients and traditional techniques to improve our health through nutrition, and she’s building her business in a nontraditional way, using crowdfunding rather than traditional bank loans. “I felt pretty belittled and disrespected during a few of my meetings with traditional banks and realized it wasn’t who I wanted to be financially beholden to,” she said. “I think there are still a lot of obstacles for women and minorities when it comes to funding and raising capital, and it’s unfortunately why we don’t see a lot of diversity in small business.” Dodge has received helpful advice from her fellow Woodward alumni in the Hsu family, Howard Hsu ’95, Anita Hsu Wilson ’98, and Ronald Hsu ’00, the Atlanta restaurateurs behind Lazy Betty and Sweet Auburn BBQ. “I’ve loved getting to know and watch the Hsu family. Their business growth has been inspiring, and I’ve appreciated their kindness toward me as I grow mine,” Dodge said. She values community, so she wants to offer some "pay as you can" classes in addition to regularly priced culinary classes. These last few months, she’s been busy with the permitting and funding necessary to get Colette Bread off the ground, but she hopes for some calm in the next few years to travel and spend time with family. “Beyond that, for my next business venture, I’m hoping to build a bed and breakfast/destination cooking school and farm out toward Athens,” she said.