Matilda Bakehouse creator’s baking background handy during pandemic
Special to Milwaukee Journal Sentinel USA TODAY NETWORK – WISCONSIN
Matilda Bakehouse brings together the best of Allie Fisher’s baking backgrounds.
Her first teacher was Mom, and she’s never met a cookie she doesn’t like. Yet she studied at Chicago’s French Pastry School, and much of her resume includes fine dining kitchens and creating upscale and perfectly plated desserts.
When she started Matilda Bakehouse in August 2020, it was a way to keep baking during a pandemic. As a mom, she’s found that being her own boss fits her well.
Every week means a rotating selection of cookies, cakes, breads, pastries and other deliciousness for markets, pop-ups and pickups at her River Hills location. Fisher also does catering and custom orders. Currently, she’s working on a permanent weekly pop-up in the Third Ward, and hopes to announce details soon.
For online ordering, a listing of popups, markets and other events, go to
Question: What is your background and training?
I went to the French Pastry School (in Chicago). I graduated in ’09, then stayed for an internship. You work for free, but you get to do the whole course all over again plus more. I got to meet great chefs and be a teacher’s assistant. You get to do fun things you’d never get to do in class, like deliver a chocolate showpiece in downtown Chicago traffic. Just 10 blocks, which feels like 800 years in Chicago city traffic. But you learn how to do it, and once you’ve done it you know you can.
Q: What was one of the most valuable takeaways from culinary school?
One of my teachers has this
laundry list of amazing things he's done, he was teaching cake class … he was like you'll have hard days where you don't want to go to work, or things just aren't going right in the kitchen. Remind yourself, you're just making cake.
Q: What prompted you to open Matilda Bakehouse?
It started as a cottage bakery in August 2020, primarily because like everybody in this industry we lost our jobs. We currently do pop-ups and markets, and pickups in River Hills, because we don't have a storefront.
Q: What was the biggest challenge going from professional kitchens to baking at home when you started? Are you working from a commercial kitchen now?
Yes. I'm really enjoying being able to bake more than 12 cookies at a time. We'd get orders for several hundred cookies. I would wake up, bake nonstop till 3 a.m. Now I can do a couple hundred in 40 minutes.
Q: What got you into baking? Did you always want to do this professionally?
I baked a lot with my mom when I was little. Throughout high school, I would say baking turned into this big stress reliever. … At some point I made up my mind this is what I wanted to do. I'd get up and watch Food Network. They had Jacques Torres on and he had chocolate showpieces, and they'd show competitions. I was all in.
Supposedly when I was little I told my mom I was going to become a baker, and in the summer I was going to cut hair in France.
Q: Did you ever get to France? Did it influence your career?
Pastry chef Allie Fisher struck out on her own in August 2020, creating Matilda Bakehouse, which makes a range of baked goods for markets, pop-ups and pickups. She also does catering and custom orders.
I was able to go to France for a family vacation. … Every morning we'd get a croissant, go to the boulangerie, the cheese shop. It was magical, but I haven't ever worked in Paris. I did work with Kurt Fogle in Milwaukee. That was great, with the constant repetition of skills and figuring out what I liked …
I worked with Kurt long ago, at Pfister Hotel. When Kurt moved to Surg, I moved with him. Eventually I moved to Illinois, back to Milwaukee. I was pastry chef for Bacchus and Lake Park Bistro. I then went to Rocket Baby, because children and restaurant hours are not the best combination. Especially in pastry, because you're the last course.
Q: How are you approaching things at Matilda Bakehouse these days?
It is kind of humbling going backwards. I'm going to make a birthday cake, a really great birthday cake using great ingredients and flavors and these
texture profiles. I think it brings me back to why I liked baking. … I want to make things that make me happy, that I want to eat. Then I also have to bring it up to a certain skill level, and I like pretty food. I'm not going to lie.
Q: What can people expect with your cookies?
Cookies are my favorite. Some people love cake, I love cookies. It is my go-to. I don't care if someone made it, or I made it, from the best bakery in the world, or a pack of Oreos. I love cookies. We change our cookies every two months. Cinnamon roll cookies will be on at least until June.
Q: What’s your best cookie tip?
I am a strong believer that cookies need to be cold. From a flavor perspective, the dough tastes so much better once it has sat for 24 hours. It develops a whole different flavor profile. It changes the cookie, rather than if you scoop and bake immediately. It is like anything you bake, if you give time for it to hydrate a little longer, the butter and fat to set, there is something magical.
Q: Where do you find recipe and flavor inspiration?
I like to make what makes me happy, and with owning a business I can do that. … A lot of it is trial. An example, the cinnamon roll cookie. I love cinnamon rolls. I used to stress bake them in high school. I also love all kinds of cookies. Why not make this turn into a cookie? It sounds fun and is a challenge. Then let's have it be frosted, but not the frosting on the outside, because from a packing standpoint it is messy. So it is on the inside, a nice surprise.
Q: What’s the most popular thing on your menu?
Either our chocolate croissant or cinnamon knots.
Q: What’s the first cookbook you remember getting?
I worked at Williams and Sonoma in high school. I remember buying "Alinea" (by Grant Achatz) and "The French Laundry" (by Thomas Keller). I loved them and looked over them obsessively.
Q: What’s one cookbook you’ve given as a gift?
I recommend Jacquy Pfeiffer's book (“The Art of French Pastry” 2013). It is so good if they're asking a lot about baking. Otherwise, anything by Pierre Herme. Any of his baking books and his basics are so good, whether the macaron book or any that he's helped Dorie Greenspan co-write. If you're studying pastry, you have to have one of his books.
COURTESY OF PAUL STRABBING