Then-GW Law student Yael Krigman was deep in bar-exam prep when a different kind of discipline began to pull her in: mixing, kneading and shaping bagels in her kitchen.
As Krigman worked toward her career in law her true passion, baking, took the center stage in her life. Fifteen years later, she’s known in D.C. not for legal briefs but for Baked by Yael, her nut-free, kosher bakery offering a 35-item holiday menu that ranges from Christmas jumbo cake pops to trays of rugelach, a Hanukkah classic.
But it would take her years to reach that point. After graduating from GW Law in 2009 and passing the bar exam, she spent eight years as an associate at White & Case. Even then, Krigman couldn’t stop baking, which pushed her to launch a side venture at farmers markets and a kiosk in an Annapolis, Maryland mall — effectively working two full-time jobs for more than a year.
“I was afraid that maybe I would not be successful,” Krigman said. “I was afraid that I would fail, and it was such a drastic change.”
Krigman said she realized she had to choose one position and solidified her decision to pursue entrepreneurship full-time after a now-defunct food blog Daily Candy rated her bagels as best in D.C. Early on, she said she carried the weight of the entire operation herself, including the baking, marketing, selling, even hiring her first employee, all while raising funds to avoid outside investors who might try to shape the business she was still learning to build.
“I cast aside the job that I had for eight years with a huge salary and benefits and resources galore, and I put aside the degree that I had spent three years working on and basically said, I’m going to do something different,” Krigman said.
After two years of planning and crowdfunding, Baked by Yael opened its brick-and-mortar shop on Connecticut Avenue in January 2015, directly across from the National Zoo. Krigman said the care poured into every made-from-scratch treat — the mixing, baking and decorating — has helped sustain a “small but mighty” team of two dozen employees working within her 1,100-square-foot space.
“It’s a very small bakery, but we get a lot done in there, and you can tell,” Krigman said. “Especially if you come in December. We had somebody refer to it yesterday as organized chaos.”
In order to make her baked goods accessible for all community members, Krigman said she decided to make Baked by Yael certified nut free later that same year in January 2015. The steps she has taken have won her the award of being part of Allergy Eats, a food allergy restaurant guide’s “Top 15 Allergy-Friendly Sweet Shops in America” in 2019.
“They would hug me and literally cry with tears and say that their kid had never been able to go into a bakery before because they have such a severe nut allergy and they were so excited,” Krigman said. “Sometimes the parents were more excited than the kids, and they brought their kids in, and the kids could choose whatever they wanted.”
She said Baked by Yael’s kosher identity is rooted in her upbringing in a Conservative Jewish community in Annapolis, with many of the bakery’s recipes drawn from her Israeli aunt. Krigman added that she sought kosher certification in August 2015 after realizing some Jewish customers couldn’t eat her products — including the very treats familiar from their own traditions — because they weren’t certified kosher.
“My rabbi at the time at Adas Israel basically came in and inspected our facility and did some paperwork and certified us as kosher, so that just opened us up to a whole other group,” Krigman said.
The demand for Krigman’s challah has grown so large over the years that she said she started a subscription service in order to keep up with the requests. Krigman said the plans are customizable and customers are able to skip weeks, with an added discount for choosing to subscribe to the plan, amassing at least 60 weekly subscribers.
“People were just coming in and then they were upset that we were sold out, so we started this subscription that basically forced people to commit to 12 or 24 weeks,” Krigman said.
Throughout her time as founder and owner, Krigman said she has given back to the community during the pandemic and multiple government shutdowns by donating baked goods to furloughed and laid off workers and giving free meals to zookeepers who could not work during the shutdown. Faced with laying off all of her staff due to COVID-19, Krigman said she combatted the challenges of operating a small business during the pandemic by allowing customers to purchase cake pops for seniors, first responders and health care workers, which she then dropped off at various locations.
“When COVID started and Baked by Yael was really suffering, the community just came out in ways that, honestly, I couldn’t have expected,” Krigman said. “The way that they stepped up and made Baked by Yael part of their weekly and daily routine because they wanted to make sure that we stayed in business.”
Baked by Yael reaches different parts of D.C. by maintaining a presence at local farmers markets and also operating the cafe at the Edlavitch DC Jewish Community Center in Dupont Circle. Krigman said there are customers who come to her booth at farmers markets every single week, with some regulars being her former law school professors.
“It’s really funny to see them out of their natural environment, so that’s been an interesting experience,” Krigman said.
Because of her Jewish roots, she said Baked by Yael also remains open on Christmas Day. Krigman said every year, she and her family run the store on Christmas Day — this year opening from 8 a.m. to 3 p.m. She said her family is involved with the business on a daily basis, with her dad renovating the front of the bakery and her mom processing orders.
And now that she’s built out the business, she said she does not do most of the baking — instead using her law degree for the business side of the store.
“It is funny to look back on how I used to make things and how I was making things when it was just me and how far we’ve come, and how much we’ve grown since then,” Krigman said.
