Around a bend along rural Red Hill Road outside Petaluma, where green and gold grasses carpet the hills and century-old barns hunker down like sentries, you’ll find one of Sonoma’s unlikeliest foodie treasures: the hobbit-size wagon that’s home to Mary Denham’s indie pastry project, Blooms End at Neighboring Fields.
There’s no sign along the road — it keeps blowing away in this windy corridor of the valley — just a sharp turn into the parking lot for Tenfold Farmstand. Right next to the 130-year-old schoolhouse-turned-market, you’ll find Denham’s tiny perfect world, which draws customers from across the Bay Area for croissant tarts smoothed with aprium jam, golden olive oil cake with oro blanco grapefruit cream, and savory Turkish urfa butter snails with garlic labneh and herb salad.
The rural location, with cows grazing the hills just beyond and barely any cell reception, makes sense for this highly creative artist who pours her heart into everything she does, from sourcing exquisite ingredients to restoring a vintage wagon to arranging seasonal blooms for her pastry displays. “I’ve always been more at home in the country,” Denham explains, pouring a cup of fragrant bergamot rooibos tea from Oakland’s Molly’s Refresher.
Just a few years back, Denham, who is in her early 30s and grew up in the suburban East Bay, launched her business with a series of Bay Area pop-ups, working out of a shared kitchen in pursuit of being her own boss and focusing on her love of baking. “I went to culinary school, I had worked in local bakeries and restaurants, and I was always observing,” she says. “I always knew what I wanted to do, which is bake every day, source every single ingredient thoughtfully, and then talk directly to every single one of my customers.”…