MANSFIELD — The owner of Mansfield’s newest bakery plans to bring international flair to her recipes.
Darlene Mast, of Mansfield, will sell breads and pastries inspired by places like France, Italy and Japan at Share ‘N Dipity, which she expects to open later this month at 287 Taylor Rd.
“I’ve traveled quite a bit, and I want to bring all of that back here,” Mast said.
She doesn’t consider herself a “foodie,” but when she travels, she makes a point to stop by bakeries and sample their selections.
“I take pictures of every bakery I go to,” Mast said. “I go in, and literally, I’m taking pictures of all the breads.”
Share ‘N Dipity will feature homemade cookies, pastries, croissants, biscotti and more. Mast’s favorite item to bake is bread. She intends to bake quite the variety. There will be potato dill bread, sour dough, ciabatta, baguettes and more.
At farmer’s markets, where she’s previously sold her breads, the olive and the cranberry walnut were both popular among her customers.
“It’s going to very diverse, from white to crusty bread,” Mast said. “The baguettes, the sourdoughs, the kinds that we go to Columbus for, I want them here, so someone can have that fresh and local.”
Coffee will be available for purchase and muffins, scones and other breakfast favorites will be featured via a grab and go section of the bakery.
Mast also intends to highlight other local vendors in a portion of the bakery. In early February, this section already featured a shipment of specialty olive oils and tea from Twisted Fig Tea.
Later, it will grow to include jewelry, embroidery, signs and other crafts by local vendors, coffee and woven items, sourced through Crossroads Church’s mission to help Guatemalan farmers.
“I want it to be local vendors. People I know who have been referred by someone I know,” Mast said. “I want this area to be an outlet for them.”
Eventually, she imagines a full line of finger foods available for purchase.
Mast found inspiration to start her own bakery when rearranging a small plastic bakery that once belonged to her daughter.
“The Lord told me, I’m going to have a bakery, so I thought, let’s figure out how to do this,” Mast said.
She immediately got to work, setting an 18-month deadline, which has only recently been exceeded.
In that time, she’s refined her baking abilities with lessons in San Francisco and transformed the building she owned at 287 Taylor Rd. into a “homey bakery.” She felt the aesthetic was especially important because the bakery is the only commercial property in the neighborhood.
The space, Mast said, is known as the former Crall’s grocery store, but has since served as a bike shop, seamstress and roofing company before she acquired it and opened All Care Services, a business that has since relocated.
“So we already had the building, and I looked at other buildings, but this one fit,” Mast said. “I could envision it.”
Mast grew up enjoying baking and took her first job in the field at age 16. She worked at a bakery then, and in her 20s she worked for a commercial bread bakery.
“That’s where I really got the bug,” Mast said.
She continued to bake for her husband and eventually her four children, but until recently, she hadn’t considered it as a possible career.
“It’s change. It’s the unknown. And sometimes I have the thought of what am I doing, why am I doing this? But it’s brief,” Mast said. “But I don’t really have fear. Usually, if I think about doing something, I just do it. I don’t have the what ifs because if it doesn’t work, I just look at it and figure out a way to make it work.”
Mast says she plans to open Share ‘N Dipity as soon as possible. Once open, the hours at Share ‘N Dipity will be 6:30 a.m. to 7:30 p.m. Monday through Friday and 7 a.m. to 1 p.m. Saturday and Sunday. They may be revised later.
For more information about the bakery, including the announcement of its opening date, follow Share ‘N Dipity on Facebook.
