- January 27, 2026
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Adam and Yahaira Shimer’s living room in Heritage Harbour isn’t filled with the traditional couch and coffee table.
Instead, it has multiple bakery racks, three refrigerators and two commercial ovens.
Adam Shimer is the executive chef at the Ringling College of Art and Design.
He's a chef by trade, not a baker. But after a trip to Fort Lauderdale for a food show, he was inspired to make his own sourdough.
The experiment with sourdough not only turned him into a baker, but his wife, too.
The couple own Crust N' Crumb. What started with Adam Shimer posting a picture of a homemade sourdough loaf on the Nextdoor app turned into a full-fledged business in under a year.
When a commenter asked if he sold the loaves, Shimer said, “Sure.” His first order was for 10 loaves last January, and the orders haven’t stopped coming in since.
At the start, Shimer was making the bread for himself, so he was using his home oven and a KitchenAid stand mixer.
Yahaira Shimer had been a stay-at-home mom to 4-year-old Malcolm and 5-year-old Maynard, but toward the end of last year, the youngest had to be enrolled in daycare.
Between October and December, the couple baked and sold about 5,000 loaves of bread, 1,200 bagels, 1,200 scones and 800 muffins.
While the bakery’s products come in an array of flavors, they’re all made from the same base of a three-ingredient sourdough: flour, water and salt.
But everything stems from a “starter” made of just flour and water. As the starter sits, it soaks up wild yeast from the environment. So a sourdough made in California will be different from a sourdough made in Florida because the airborne yeasts are different.
A starter is a self-perpetuating culture of wild yeast and lactic acid bacteria, and it can last for year as long as it is cared for properly.
When the Shimers talk about their starter, it’s as if they're talking about another child.
Yahaira Shimer feeds the starter regularly throughout the day, and the starter goes on vacation with them.
“The older it gets, the more mature it gets,” Adam Shimer said. “If this thing dies, we’re done.”
The Shimers have kept their starter alive since the 2024 hurricane season when making sourdough for them was nothing more than a boredom buster.
Since then, the starter has traveled with them to a wedding in Chicago. It’s also been to Orlando, Las Vegas and North Carolina.
Adam Shimer imagined he would own a food truck one day, but never a bakery.
When he was about 18 years old, he started off his career baking. He hated the early morning hours so much that he switched to cooking.
Now, the couple wakes up at 3:30 a.m. to boil bagels and get out the door by 6:30 a.m. on Saturday mornings. Crust N' Crumb is a regular vendor at the Bradenton Public Market from October through May.
The stand sells out every week, so regular customers know to pre-order and have their sourdough set aside. The Shimers do a weekly Lakewood Ranch drop-off as well.
Crust N' Crumb gained a strong following in just one year. All their business comes from either the market or word of mouth.
Adam Shimer credited his long fermentation process for the sourdough’s popularity. He said people often think that sourdough is a flavor, but it’s actually a process.
So even if the label at a store says sourdough, it’s not necessarily sourdough because additives, such as vinegar, can mimic the tangy taste of sourdough that’s naturally derived from fermentation.
Beyond the starter being fed, the dough is “put to sleep.” Once the dough rises and has been shaped, it goes into the refrigerator for at least 36 hours before being baked.
Adam Shimer noted that when the dough sleeps longer, both the flavor and the texture of the crumb is enhanced. The bread is also more easily digested. Many of his regular customers are gluten sensitive, but they can eat his bread because of the long fermentation process.
“(Longer fermentation) is what makes my bread different from anyone else in the area,” he said. “Most of them are (resting) overnight — 12 hours.”
