It’s been a decade since Guilford resident Gail Fishman first tried her hand at homemade granola. Today, Fishman’s vegan, wheat-free WOOT! Granola has garnered a loyal following in the Baltimore area and beyond.
A lifelong baker, Fishman says she had never been a granola fan. “I thought it was too sweet, just like a bunch of crunched cookies,” says Fishman, who leaned more toward healthful baking.
But since her daughter, Sasha, asked for granola, Fishman decided to try putting her own spin on the popular breakfast and snack food.
“I asked myself, ‘What do I have in my kitchen that could add more flavor and more protein and make it less of a carbo load?’ We have always had crystallized ginger in the house and a lot of dried fruits and a lot of nuts,” she says. “So I started monkeying around with the recipe.”
Fishman says she increased the amounts of dried fruits, nuts and seeds and decreased the percentage of oats, fats and refined sugar. She added coconut palm crystals and maple syrup from Steyer Brothers in Garrett County, Maryland, so that her granola would have a local ingredient.
When she was finally satisfied with her recipe, Fishman began serving the granola alongside a wine and cheese plate when she entertained.
“A close friend, Irena Stein, [founder] of Alma [Cocina Latina restaurant in Baltimore] tasted it and said, ‘Oh my gosh, Gail, this is amazing. There’s nothing like this.’ And she sent me to the fancy food show in New York, so I could see that there was nothing like it. At the time, Irena had a little café — Cafe Azafran — on the Johns Hopkins [University] campus, and she invited me to sample and sell it there.”
The business was a family affair right from the start, says Fishman.
“Early on, we all participated in baking, packaging, in-person sales, attending events,” she says. “Sasha has done all the graphic design for the packaging and continues to draw unique fonts for flavors. [Her husband] Jonathan is my shipping manager.”
After she began selling WOOT! at Café Azafran, the business grew slowly. Back then, Fishman was still making the granola from her home.
“It was a cleaning nightmare,” she says. If she wanted to take the business wholesale and move it into a commercial kitchen, she had to obtain certification from the Maryland Department of Health.
“So I took the route to certification, which was a very long route,” says Fishman. “It requires a huge amount of information about how you process all your ingredients. So it was a big learning experience, and I considered it one of the greatest accomplishments for the growth of the product.”
Once WOOT! was certified, Fishman was able to move her business out of her home and into B-More Kitchen, a food incubator in the Govans neighborhood of Northeastern Baltimore.
From there, says Fishman, “the business moved toward wholesaling and away from in-person sales such as farmers’ markets and events and that kind of thing, which is very labor-intensive. I miss being out in the community, but I’m very pleased that we can be out in the community through local grocery stores, which are our wholesale outlets.”
Over time, Fishman developed new WOOT! flavors. About three years ago, she was able to hire “an incredible trained pastry chef baker named Chris Hale.” Hale’s flavors include Banana Haze, which contains bananas, cocoa nibs and hazelnuts.
“It’s like a riff on bananas with Nutella,” says Fishman. “I think the most interesting thing about [WOOT!] is how crazy and rich the flavors are. We call it a ‘taste adventure!’”
Other flavors from Hale are the ever-popular lemon pistachio, and a winter flavor called cranberry molasses.
Fishman’s first wholesale account was with Eddie’s of Mount Vernon.
“We are still with them, and that has been thrilling to sell there. They get a lot of [Maryland Institute College of Art] students and city people, Mount Vernon people,” says Fishman. “We then branched out to Graul’s Market in Mays Chapel and Ruxton, and Eddie’s on Charles Street and Roland Avenue. And we’re at the Wine Source, which is one of my favorite stores in Baltimore, and at Farm Chick’s Corner Market in Reisterstown now.
For information, visit wootgranola.com
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