Emily Hoste began Stacks Bakery back in July of 2023. Stacks is a local home bakery that offers a variety of baked goods and custom orders on their website and a curated selection of bakery items at the Statesboro Farmer’s Market in Downtown Statesboro.
Hoste is originally from Gray, Georgia— a small town situated between Macon and Milledgeville. She moved to Statesboro to attend Georgia Southern University where she graduated with a bachelor’s and master’s degree in Literature.
After graduation, she decided she “wanted to incorporate literature into my future baking business, most likely in the form of a bookstore along with a future storefront.” The bakery's name came from a time she and best friend spent at the GSU Henderson Library in an area known as the 'stacks.'
"The idea randomly hit my friend on the head and was like 'Stacks! Books! Stacks of pastries!' And I absolutely loved it,” Hoste shared.
Hoste explains that Stacks is more of a European/French influenced bread and pastry bakery. “I think this is what sets us apart from other places at the farmer's market or just in town overall,” she says.
They have a wide variety of baked goods at the Statesboro Farmer’s Market on Saturday mornings, including their sourdough breads (their #1 best selling item), and European breads and pastries like croissants, macarons, baguettes, quiche, focaccia, and petit fours.
Hoste says, “Our pastries, specifically our croissants, are extremely popular among the Statesboro crowd! I love this because pastries take time and have a lot of beauty in the process. It's slow, and you have to be intentional, and I think people can taste the difference and care in them -- and an absurd amount of butter.”
Beginnings of a young baker
As a child, Emily Hoste helped her mom in the kitchen for as long as she can remember. She shares that her mother, Kelly Pittman-Swafford, was a CPA and business owner with her own accounting firm, and always needed her siblings' and her to help around the house as much as possible. She says she was fortunate to help her mom cook dinner most nights.
It was there in the family kitchen that an interest in the culinary world was sparked for Hoste.
“For my mom, I think cooking was a chore to her most of the time with a family of 6; understandably so!” Hoste shared. “But when we baked, it was always special -- a holiday, someone's birthday, hosting family and friends, or just baking cookies for someone that's been through a hard time.”
Hoste fondly remembers when she was around 11 years old, her mom let her decide to take the lead on her brother's birthday cake.
“This was the biggest deal to little me. Only moms and grandparents made cakes in our house," she remembers.
She decided on a Mississippi Mud Cake, a simple chocolate cake, rich chocolate frosting, marshmallows, and gummy worms. "Honestly, still one of the best cakes out there!” Hoste says. “Being the amazing mom she was, she didn't say a negative word about the cake as I somehow managed to make an already messy cake the ugliest dessert known to man.”
Hoste says she thinks of this moment when she gets overwhelmed in the midst of baking for Stacks. “To my mom, it didn't matter if there was chocolate frosting unevenly spread, marshmallows all over the kitchen floor. She knew I poured my heart into that cake!”
A loss and finding a love for baking again
Hoste's mother sadly passed away from stage-four breast cancer in 2011 when Hoste was just twelve years old. After her mother passed away, Hoste said she went years without baking very much. It was her grandparents living next door to her that help reignite that love.
“I'm not sure if this was intentional or not, but my Granny started having 'cookie days' with me around Christmas," she shared. "We would spend days at a time making tons of cookies, at least five different flavors that she would bookmark in her Southern Living magazine. And suddenly, spending these days with my Granny, my love for baking and connection to my mother returned a bit.”
Hoste says as her interests grew, her Grandpa also began to show her his recipes. “He is an incredibly intelligent man and was actually a chemist, so he takes his baking very seriously. He taught me how to perfect cakes, so much so that to this day, he will analyze the science behind baking, tweak a fifty-year old recipe, and even buy a new oven if his pound cake didn't turn out right because the temperature was off.”
She says she didn’t realize it at the time, but looking back, her grandparents “were able to really, really connect me to my mom and help me work through this grief. And the best part is, they were just being themselves and sharing what they love with me.”
Among the cookies that Stacks sells is a family special: their raspberry thumbprint cookies. Hoste says her Granny crafted the recipe, but her Mom made it a Christmas staple in their house.
They would also bake frosted sugar cookies, make candies and fudge, and prepare monkey bread or cinnamon rolls for Christmas morning. Hoste shares, “I think her love for holidays and traditions really solidified these as my favorite recipes of hers.”
Back when Hoste was writing her master’s thesis in literature at GSU, she learned, “elevating traditions and maintaining human connection really heals us -- no matter the heartache,” a concept she applies in her own life and baking business.
Hoste, now almost 26, says that baking has helped her feel closer to her mother than ever before.
Hoste and her husband have now made Statesboro their home because of their fondness of the community. "People here truly care about one another— whether they’re our closest friends or customers we meet at the market, we feel so loved and valued here!”
The future certainly looks sweet for Stacks Bakery with hopes of opening a storefront in the future. Their goal is to have a European-style bakery storefront with a bookstore, a kid's play area, and cultivate a space that brings people together.
Find Stacks Bakery online or visit them at the Statesboro Farmer’s Market on Saturdays behind the Visitors Center. You can also follow Stacks on Facebook and Instagram to see what's baking!