(upbeat music) - I find that baking brings happiness.

I see a smile on people's face, and I think that's what I'm going for.

I mean, have you ever seen anybody walk out of a bakery angry?

- Thanks, guys.

Have a good day.

- I love you.

- Love you too.

(upbeat music) - My passion and my drive is really based on teaching other people how to be successful every time.

My name is Marda Stoliar.

I live in Bend, Oregon, and I love baking.

(upbeat music) (upbeat music continues) - Marda loves to share her knowledge and help people learn new things and help them be the best they could be at baking.

Marda's gift of herself is kind of an eternal gift, really.

(upbeat music) - Yeah, well, that's as good as it's gonna get and the bags under the eyes.

And I think there's a lot of people in my situation in this world that have no intention of retiring and I'm one of those.

Sourdough starter, bread flour, milk powder, yeast.

(upbeat music) - [Sheila] There are hidden gems among us, and Marda Stoliar is one.

Hey!

- Well, hello.

- Look at you.

I'm Sheila Rittenberg and I met Marda about 17 years ago and we grew to be friends.

And as that friendship developed, I heard more and more stories about her life and her career as a pastry chef and teacher.

And when I understood the influence she's had on her students I felt this was a story that had to be told.

- Another room.

- At 82, Marda Stoliar's life is filled with improbable and unusual experiences that most of us just dream about.

And part of that as a pastry chef, as she is, is the connection she creates through her recipes.

- I was a shoe designer in my first life.

I manufactured for I guess about 40 years all the Buster Brown shoes in the world and plus a few other things like athletic shoes for Gucci and things like that.

And then for 25 years I did both.

Shoe designing and baking.

- Marda lived and worked in Europe and Asia for decades.

She was born in Oregon and at a point she and her husband decided to come to Oregon, to Bend, Oregon which at the time was a Mill town.

And she opened a wonderful, fine European bakery.

She named it Breads of France.

And Bend had seen nothing like it.

Marda ran Breads of France for about four or five years.

Unfortunately, her hands gave out.

- I lost the use of my hands and had to have my hands rebuilt for the first time.

- [Sheila] Her hands were saved, but she could not go back to full-time work as a baker.

- I became a baking instructor by default.

- Marda's contacts in Asia after decades of living and working in Europe and Asia began to send her students to study baking with her.

And she would say, well, I don't have a baking school.

And they would say, we're gonna send people to study with you.

So she opened a school.

- I named it International School of Baking, because I had people from all over the world starting to come to me.

Oh, he presses it down before it's frozen so that you don't have to do anything to it.

And if it's bad pastry cream, it's bad bakery.

I've never taught the same thing twice, because maybe they live in Honduras or they live in Cambodia, or they live in the south of France, or they live in, you know, Helsinki, Finland.

There's only one student at a time.

So I can customize a class for every student.

(upbeat music) Okay, now you're on speakerphone.

- [Student] Okay, so if I use the Citro Pearl and I use lemon paste with seeds, will it still taste strongly of vanilla or will it still be lemony?

- No, it'll be about, it'll be about a medium.

- [Student] Okay, thank you for answering my question in the middle of your business.

- No problem, I'll talk to you later.

- Okay, see you later.

- Bye.

- [Student] Bye.

- I'm Ezden Flugeger.

I live in Torrington, Wyoming, which is a tiny little town northeast of Cheyenne.

(upbeat music) Through the years I've delivered more than 800 children and taken care of many, many people in the nursing home and in the hospital.

The need is never met.

It's never fulfilled.

It's, you're never done.

You're never done.

You just end your day, but you're never really done.

The day that my daughter, Eleanor was born and almost flew into the world and I held her in my arms and I saw in her face and her body the features of Down Syndrome and I knew in a flash that we were gonna need to have a different life for the future.

As she began to grow older and get into middle school and high school, I felt that we needed to have an after plan after she graduated.

At the same time, medicine is changing and physicians were being held more and more responsible for patients behaviors outside of the clinic.

And then I did a little research in town and found out that just across the street there was a bakery there for 30 years and was supported fully by the town.

And I thought, well, if they had a bakery for 30 years I surely could find something that somebody would be interested in to bake.

If I was gonna open this kind of a bakery a European bakery with pastries in a small Wyoming town.

It had to be the very best thing that anyone had ever tasted.

I wanted to be the Willy Wonka of baking.

One day I was pondering this whole problem and decided to Google how to start a bakery.

The very first hit was Marda Stoliar's International School of Baking.

And it said how to start a bakery in 20 days.

And I thought, that's ludicrous.

Nobody can learn everything they need to learn in 20 days.

(mellow music) Everybody try.

- Thank you.

Nice.

The first time I met Ezden, he was really amazed at how much was poured into one day.

You know, four to five different things going at the same time, because that's the way baker's run.

(upbeat music) (upbeat music continues) (liquid splashing) When we're learning how to bake, I'm also talking to them about balance of product line in that you need 46% chocolate in your case at all times, because 46% of the people that walk through your door are here for chocolate.

They're not here for raspberry, strawberry or lemon.

They'll just walk.

- We made incredibly beautiful, delicious things and I was in heaven.

I was studying something that was just purely for fun.

Nobody's life was at stake.

Nobody's health was at stake.

I had room for error and room to try again, room to perfect things.

- I don't think that there are a lot of mistakes that cannot be fixed.

I think that if more people taught how to fix things, people would have a better sense of themselves.

- [Sheila] Like recipes that need fixing.

Marda helps her students change their lives to discover what really makes them happy.

Ezden's story epitomizes Marda's gift.

Teaching him how to bake also taught him that he could fix what wasn't working in his life.

- I'm not just a doctor, I'm actually the bread doctor.

- Da, da, da, da, da.

♪ Dashing through the snow ♪ ♪ in a one horse open sleigh ♪ ♪ over the field we go ♪ ♪ laughing all the way ♪ ♪ Ha, ha, ha ♪ ♪ Bells on bobtails ring ♪ ♪ Making spirits bright ♪ ♪ What fun it is to ride and sing ♪ ♪ A sleighing song tonight ♪ - Got it.

It has gotten my daughter involved in being in the community in a happy, productive sort of way so that she gets to meet people and talk with people.

She works the front counter.

She runs the register, as well as helping prepare the food in the back.

And she's known in the community.

People know, and the community has been gracious and patient with her as she's learned to run the register and do some of those, some of those technical tasks.

(mellow music) - I love Marda, I really do.

- Let's have dinner.

- Yep.

- But your cookies are really wonderful.

- Amazing pork roast for dinner.

- Sorry.

- You need butter?

- Marda comes back to my bakery as a consultant a couple of times a year.

She's become practically Aunt Marda and never would've been able to do it without Marda.

Our whole family life has changed, because of our relationship with Marda.

The fact that we even have a bakery that's thriving has been a positive ripple effect for all of my employees.

In the world that we live in there's enough sadness and enough despair and there's not enough of just pure joy.

And one of my goals was I want to dispense bread love to the community.

I think that Marda-- Can you reach that shelf?

Much like a great poet or an artist of any kind, will never be gone, because what she's taught me will live on forever.

What she's taught her students, her other students, will live on and their handy work.

- Actually, I think I get more from the students many times than they get from me, because I get to learn about their background, the possibilities, the political issues, the whatever it is.

(upbeat music) (upbeat music continues) (crowd applauding) - Yes.

- Okay.

- Oh, this is so exciting.

This is, I can't believe this.

- Happy Birthday Marda.

- Happy Birthday.

- Thank you.

- [Friend] Excited to be here with you.

- [Marda] Oh, I need more of the hugs.

I need more of them hugs.

- Ladies and gentlemen, welcome to Marda's wonderful 80th birthday.

- I feel like Marda in the last seven and a half years has been the leaven in our lives and the leaven in our bakery.

And leaven means to enliven.

She has brought a new skill set to me and to our family.

She's brought new things to our town.

She's brought beautiful friendship in our lives.

And a friend to my daughter and our family are the things that I find incredibly endearing and beautiful about Marda.

So with that, I'd like to propose a toast.

So we raise your cup, your glass, your coffee, your water, your whatever.

To our dear friend Marda Stoliar.

Cheers.

(all exclaiming) We love you.

- She is at once once of the most elegant women I know, but also earthy, grounded with the rest of us.

(upbeat music) (all chattering) - It's good.

(upbeat music) (all chattering) - I've had really a wonderful life and people say do you have a, you know, something you still wanna do in life?

And I'd say, no, I've done whatever I wanted to do.

And the people that really mean something to me I keep in my life.

- And I think that baking is an art and Marda's formulas and Marda's techniques will echo on long long after she is physically not with us.

- Marda inspires me, because she stops at nothing.

She has the determination that she wants to pass over to her students.

She's done this all her life and I often wondered, you know, where she's going to take this and just how far she's going to go.

- I will keep working as long as people keep hiring me.

(Marda giggling) And they put up with me, you know.

I just, I love what I do.

Someone asked me, "When are you gonna move into a retirement facility?"

And I said, "I wouldn't, because I'd have to take my oven."

(upbeat music) (upbeat music continues) (upbeat music continues) (upbeat music continues)