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I know Dayna Evans from our time as colleagues at Eater, when she was one of the best people in the game writing about baking and the culture around it. (Even before that, I was a big fan of her writing.) She left her role at Eater to pursue baking full-time, turning what she’d started as a cottage bakery in her home in 2022 into the aptly named Downtime Bakery, which opened in December 2024.
Even before the shop opened in Mount Airy, Philadelphia, Downtime started hosting a series of Bakers’ Hangs, events where anyone with an interest in baking (including professionals) could come swap treats or take a trip to a local mill. I talked to Evans about why doing meetups like this felt important for her bakery.
Pre Shift: Why did you start the Bakers’ Hang series?
Dayna Evans: I started as a cottage baker and baking at home can be an isolating craft in a lot of ways. Obviously, it’s really early mornings. Especially when you’re a one-man show baking at home, you don’t really have access to community in the sense of other bakers as much as you do your customers — the people who are part of the greater picture. When I started in my home, which was around January 2022, I would have questions, or I would be testing something and I wanted to know if an expert thought it was good. I was really looking for an opportunity to meet other people in my city, either professionally or otherwise doing the same thing as me, and get a chance to chat with them.
What are the events like?
The only requirement is that you are, in some form, a baker: Home bakers, professional bakers, anybody who wants to show up, and even people who are baking-curious can come. It’s not ticketed; the only real thing is an RSVP. They’ve all been very different in energy and in terms of who shows up. It’s not just industry folks. It’s not just homemakers. Everyone shows up, which I really appreciate.
I don’t really think you even have to bake something. I encourage this, and often I take my own advice. It’s nice, obviously, if you’re testing something. Especially now that Downtime is open [as a brick-and-mortar], we tend to bring stuff that we have [left over] at the end of the day. It’s really more about conversation and hanging out. I don’t always make something because I’m too tired, so I just want to hang out with people.
Not every event is at Downtime. How did you decide to host outside of your own space?
We’ve done one at Mighty Bread, Lost Bread, Dead King Bread, Two Persons Coffee, and then one at Downtime. I like living in Philly because no one’s competitive with each other here, like, I think it’s a real ego-free place in a lot of ways. Expanding and connecting with other bakers and other bakeries shows we all are trying to help each other in a way. I think that that’s the sort of larger picture thing with Downtime too: We are a bakery, but we also like other stuff. I think allowing people to see a bakery as more than just the place that you come to get bread really makes people connect to it a lot more.
[I also get to] commiserate with other bakery owners. We hosted one at Lost Bread early this year and it was good to talk to them. We all had had a really slow January, so it was like, “Oh, how are you guys surviving?”
Downtime also now hosts nighttime events. Why did you decide to do that?
Our bakery is open Thursday through Sunday, which is not a huge number of hours in the scheme of things. Even though we’re all maxed out and working as much as we possibly can, I think that we want to be able to activate the space when it feels like it goes unused. I really think of Downtime as a cinematic universe: It doesn’t feel like it’s just a bakery to me; it’s a real community hub. Because of that, we have a lot of people who have been in our orbit and we’re like, “We should do something with them.” A lot of that [programming] speaks to our interests; every person on staff at the bakery is so much more than just a baker so it allows us this opportunity to expand on the things we’re into.
What will the next Bakers’ Hang entail?
Castle Valley Mill is a mill in Doylestown that is run by some of my favorite people: a family called the Fischers. They supply flour to us, and we’re big fans of the stuff that they do. The mill is on the Neshaminy Creek, and it’s a beautiful setting. I’ve been talking to them about how to get more people who bake in Philly interested and compelled by stone-ground flour and the stuff that they’re doing. They do tours, and we were like, “Well, we could just do a Bakers’ Hang there.” I arranged for this school bus that will leave from Philly in the afternoon, take us to Castle Valley, and then take us back to Philly.
I’ve known the Fischers since even before I ran the bakery, because I would interview them about flour-related stuff. People might not know that much about this sort of stone-ground flour movement, but this is a real hands-on way of getting to understand where things are coming from. [Editor’s note: The next Bakers’ Hang will be on June 28; RSVP here.]
This conversation has been edited and condensed.
