Baking point: Career transition to baker rooted in passion for Durham woman
Barbara Nigro helped her parents launch their dream of starting a pizzeria a few years ago. Now, she's taken a leap of faith and opened her own bakery at Durham Food Hall.
Not that long ago, Nigro graduated from the University of Tennessee with a degree in kinesiology and set things up for a career in the medical field. She worked as a Certified Nursing Assistant for four years, the last of which came at Duke Hospital. With the increased strain on the medical profession due to COVID, Nigro felt the added pressure and the dread of burn out settled in.
It was time for a change.
"In the process of working through COVID and being in the health field for so long, I don't know if I got burnt out or I just really wasn't happy, but I was waking up everyday and I was really sad and just not into it anymore," Nigro said. "So I just woke up and was like 'I'm going to quit my job.'"
Mom and dad had an understandable response - how would bills get paid without a steady income and no immediate fallback plan?
There was no easy answer for Nigro, who was still new to Durham at that point, but a love of making treats had always been inside her. It just needed some massaging.
"I didn't really know what to do, but I knew I always loved to bake, that's what I've been doing my whole life," she said. "I just never knew how to make anything look pretty."
"One day I made a birthday cake for my friend and I was like 'what if I try a little bit harder on this cake' and then I tried and it turned out so pretty that nobody believed that it came from me."
You can't spell pastry without try. And so a new enterprise - Little Barb's Bakery - was born.
Running her own bakery isn't any less strenuous from a time-commitment standpoint. Her days start around 5:30 a.m. and don't end until sometimes 10:30 p.m. That's 17 hours and a lot of determination.
"I want to do it because I know that I can do it," Nigro said. "That's part of me giving it my all."
The 26-year-old from Livingston, Tennessee, had some business acumen from helping with her parents' pizzeria. She's one of nine children and sociable enough to win over customers and savvy on social media, where photos of delicious baked goods make for stirring content.
"That sense of support that I'm feeling in Durham makes me feel like it's a small town where everyone knows me and supports me," she said.
She operated a home bakery for about 10 months and took orders from friends, family and former coworkers at the hospital. The bakery opened at the food hall on Foster Street in early July and has received positive feedback online and in-person. She knows it'll take more than that to stay afloat and has started a GoFundMe to help pay for bakery equipment.
Nigro makes the usual assortment of cakes, cookies, brownies, cannolis and cinnamon rolls. One specialty is homemade pop tarts which come in s'mores, blueberry, strawberry and brown sugar flavors. The zucchini bread recipe is based off her grandma's methods.
You can follow the bakery's specials and daily happenings on Instagram (@little_barbs_bakery).
