Rachel Wyman baked for Bread Alone in Boiceville, NY, Amy’s Bread in NYC, The Patisserie in Milford, PA and Tribeca Oven in Carlstadt, NJ before opening her own bakery, Montclair Bread Co. in Montclair, NJ, in 2012. 

Despite its name, the bakery is most known for its signature doughnuts. In fact, owner Rachel Wyman has described the business as “a bread bakery with a donut addiction.”

Nine months after Wyman opened Montclair Bread Company in 2012, business was stale. She made the risky decision to focus on doughnuts, one that has paid off greatly. With customers lining up around the block for these doughnuts, the business flourished. Now, Wyman is sharing her success story in a new book, to be released on October 26.

Will Run For Doughnuts: The Montclair Bread Company Cookbook spotlights the recipes, traditions and tales of how the popular New Jersey bakery started as a tiny, hole in the wall but became a pillar of resilience for the community during the global COVID-19 pandemic.

The book shares the tried-and-true recipes Wyman spent three decades perfecting that are now the backbone of her bakery. They organized into categories such as Childhood Favorites, Breads, Doughnuts, Community Favorites and Recipes from Quarantine. Some of the recipes include Mombo's Carrot Cake and Cowboy Cookies; Sour Dough Bread and Stollen; Classic Brioche Doughnuts with Variations; Toppings, and Glazes; Pizza and Energy Bars; and, Cheese Crackers and Bagels.

“I draw inspiration from my childhood,” she says. “I like to take classic, approachable desserts that people are very familiar with and figure out ways to turn them into doughnuts. Some of our most popular doughnuts have been born this way: Strawberry Shortcake, Tres Leches, S’mores. This style of innovation also allows me to connect with my past through food.

“My grandmother made wedding cakes for a living.  She would give me a paper plate to decorate while she worked on the actual cake.  I learned how to write my name in buttercream using a pastry bag before I could hold a pencil.  Baking, from a very early age, represented a way to connect with my grandmother.  She’s still my first call when I screw something up and need to figure out a way to fix it or when I need the perfect recipe from her little orange box of index cards!”