Inspiring Conversations with Kate and Zoe Lange and Deutsch of Moon Raccoon Baking

Today we’d like to introduce you to Kate and Zoe Lange and Deutsch. 

Hi Kate and Zoe, thanks for sharing your story with us. To start, maybe you can tell our readers some of your backstories.
When we worked at a local wholesale bakery a few years ago, we quickly bonded over our love for laminated doughs, local produce, and live music. The summer of 2018 we took a trip to Europe which bonded us for life through another experience – getting food poisoning. We suffered through three days of gastrointestinal hell in Munich together, praying that we would make it on our return flight home. 

After that experience, we knew we could do anything together. Prior to getting sick, we had been touring bakeries in Paris, Amsterdam, and Brussels. There was a quality to the viennoiserie that we had seldom seen in the United States. During long train rides and walks through cities, we discussed how to bring the pastries we saw back home with us. What would it look like to create pastries like those, but using Colorado fruits and flour? 

Fast forward to the early spring of 2020. Kate is working at Watercourse Foods as a kitchen manager and Zoe as the pastry lead at Uchi Denver. COVID-19 hits. We both got furloughed from our jobs as restaurants came to a screeching halt. Knowing we would return to our jobs eventually (and hopefully sooner rather than later) we realized, this is the moment to test-drive our bakery concept. So, we started doing weekly deliveries of our pastries. We spent time talking about what we wanted our bakery to evolve into. Some of our previous job experiences showed that large-scale baking was not for us. So… what if we went in the complete opposite direction – what if we started a micro-bakery? Just the two of us, sourcing our ingredients as locally and fairly as possible. Moon Raccoon Baking Co. was born. 

We are currently working out of the Lakewood Commissary full-time, baking with Colorado-grown and milled flour, as well as Colorado produce, eggs, dairy, and honey. 

Can you talk to us a bit about the challenges and lessons you’ve learned along the way? Looking back would you say it’s been easy or smooth in retrospect?
I don’t think anyone’s journey is smooth, we are imperfect people living and growing in an imperfect world. Making the jump from decade + long careers working for others to self-employment was and is terrifying. We were (and still are) building this business from scratch, learning every day and facing each day’s challenges the best we can. We opened Moon Raccoon as bakers, confident in our skills and products, and we’ve spent the last 2 years learning how to be business owners and saleswomen. 

We’ve been impressed with Moon Raccoon Baking Co., but for folks who might not be as familiar, what can you share with them about what you do and what sets you apart from others?
We are a micro-bakery meaning the 2 of us make every single pastry, by hand, from scratch. We make everything in small batches so we can make sure every detail is done correctly. We specialize in laminated doughs (croissants and Danishes) with unique flavor profiles. We put just as much effort and attention to detail into choosing ingredients for our pastries as we do into making them. We use as many local ingredients as possible- shopping farmers markets in the summer and fall for fresh fruits and vegetables, canning hundreds of pounds of local fruit to be used through the winter and spring, sourcing our honey, eggs, milk, cream, cheeses, meats, and flour all from Colorado farmers and companies. But it’s not just about buying local, it’s also about pairing ingredients in ways that highlight them. Our Rye Chocolate Chip Cookies contains 20% Colorado grown and milled rye flour which adds a nutty, earthy flavor to the dough of the cookie, and the fair trade, Ecuadorian dark chocolate we use complements the rye flour’s flavors. Spending so much of our lives within the food industry has shown us how unsustainable many modern food practices are, and inspires us to be a part of the change our industry needs to make. We believe in creating a sustainable food system- where every person in the supply chain, from farmers to cooks, is paid fairly for their labor, and where more items on your plate come from within the tri-state area than from across the world. We want to feed our community, not only by producing delicious pastries but also by investing into the people and other businesses that make up this community. 

Do you have any memories from childhood that you can share with us?
Kate – I can’t remember how old I was, maybe 5 or 6, it was the middle of winter (in Northern North Dakota) and my dad woke me up in the middle of the night and bundled me up in my winter gear. We got in the truck and picked up my grandma next door, and then we drove out to the middle of a field and we watched a meteor shower. It was so dark, we could see thousands of stars and meteors were falling 1-2 a minute. One of the most beautiful things I’ve ever witnessed. 

Zoe – When I was 6 or 7, my mom made me a Wizard of Oz cake for my birthday and it was black and white on the outside and when we cut into it, the middle was rainbow! It was the coolest cake I’d ever seen. 

Contact Info:

• Email: moonraccoonbakingco@gmail.com
• Website: moonraccoonbakingcompany.com
• Instagram: @moonraccoonbakingco
• Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/moonraccoonbakingco

Image Credits:
Ashley Youngswick
Kate Lange