Three years ago, Mina Makram had surgery on both of his hands. Carpal tunnel, the doctor told him, the result of baking too much.
It didn’t slow Makram down. He spends more time in his Palo Alto bakery than at his home, mixing his secret gluten-free flour blend late at night and experimenting with baked goods that most people assume could never truly taste any good without gluten: bagels, croissants, focaccia, donuts, pita bread. He’s visibly energized by the challenge of accomplishing something that he’s told is impossible.
That’s the driving force behind Misfits Bakehouse, whose gluten-free baguettes, bagels, cinnamon rolls and cookies have a seriously devoted following — so much so that they raised more than $13,000 for Makram when his first bakery, Ducks and Dragons, fell apart and he had to rebuild, and have been pre-ordering paleo baklava they’ve never tried so that he can buy a dough sheeter to produce the baklava at scale. Customer support poured in again when COVID-19 hit. Makram, who’s on a mission to prove that gluten-free goods can actually taste good and still be good for you, is in the rare position of doing better financially now than before the pandemic.
I talked with Makram for the first installment of “At the table,” my series of interviews with local chefs and restaurant owners over a meal at a restaurant of their choosing, since the shutdown started. Instead of meeting at a restaurant, we had socially distanced takeout from his choice: Higuma Japanese Restaurant in Redwood City. You can read about our full conversation on the Peninsula Foodist blog at tinyurl.com/misfits-mm.
Over salmon nigiri and negihama rolls, Makram told me the unlikely success story of Misfits Bakehouse. Makram is an Egyptian refugee who graduated from high school at 16 years old and worked as an engineer at General Electric before becoming a self-taught baker determined to overcome the “stigma” of gluten-free bread. He’s not celiac himself, but was sorely disappointed by the gluten-free bread he could eat on a low-carb diet he started when he weighed over 400 pounds. Most of what he makes is also paleo, keto and dairy-free.
We talked about his baking triumphs and failures, the day he became a U.S. citizen, his unusual, transparent approach to social media and why he identifies with the concept of a misfit.
The name of the bakery was in part inspired by Apple’s 1997 “think different” commercial narrated by Steve Jobs, who says: “Here’s to the crazy ones, the misfits, the rebels, the troublemakers, the round pegs in the square holes. … The ones who see things differently … the ones who are crazy enough to think they can change the world are the ones who do.”
“That resonated a lot with me,” Makram said. “I’m not from the food world. I was actually pretty much rejected by everybody in the food world. I was called stupid. I got kicked out of restaurants. No one wanted to talk to me.
“I wanted to make these types of breads tasty,” he said, “and that sounded like a tall order.”
Email Elena Kadvany at ekadvany@paweekly.com
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