At first glance, the weekday breakfast rush at the Del Rio house looks like any other household. Alex Del Rio digs some waffles out of the freezer, popping them into the toaster along with a piece of bread. His kids come into the kitchen when the waffles are ready, eagerly gobbling up breakfast before a full day of school and activities, and Alex enjoys his toast. The difference between this house and others? The food. The toast was freshly sliced from a sourdough loaf Alex baked that morning. The waffles are also sourdough, made from scratch by Alex and kept in the freezer for busy mornings on the go.
Alex lives life with a certain philosophy in mind: “Put it on your plate.” It’s as true of the food he prepares as it is of unexpected opportunities that come his way. As a real estate property manager, a husband and a dad of three kids — including a newborn — he views this saying as a call to seize the moment, regardless of how crazy, busy or chaotic life inevitably gets. Case in point? When we talk, he’s fresh off his second trip of the day to his kids’ summer camp after one of them forgot a water bottle in the car. “Right now, our life is all hands on deck and constant curveballs,” he says, taking it all in stride. “There’s not going to be a perfect time, so I try to stop pretending there will be. I look at it like this: If something comes your way and you can’t eat it, you’ll save it for later, but just put it on your plate and see how much you can eat first,” he says.
His “try everything” attitude might seem innate, but ironically, Alex used to be the exact opposite, culinarily speaking. “I used to be a super picky eater,” he laughs. It wasn’t until he started making his own food soon after getting married that he discovered the joy of cooking.
Originally from Miami, Alex met his wife while they were both students at Spring Hill College. After they were married, some of his friends who worked in the culinary world would come over to the couple’s house to cook. “I kind of always acted as their sous chef,” he says. “When I started cooking with them, I was like, ‘You know what? I need to learn how to eat vegetables because I’m not a child. Let me cook them so they taste good.’”
That decision opened a new world of flavor and experimentation. As his palate (and family) expanded, Alex’s interest in cooking shifted toward the quality — not just the taste — of the food he was feeding his family. During his wife’s busy CPA season, he started making dinners most nights. “Fast forward to now, and I’m the family chef,” he says. “I cook 99% of what we eat. And I’m passionate about doing things the right way and making things from scratch.”
Alex says that one task remained a low priority amid all his kitchen endeavors: learning to make bread. “It felt like this mysterious thing,” he says. “Then, one day, I was like, ‘I’m just going to do it and see what happens.’” Even though he admits that his first attempt was just okay, the process and facing his intimidation head-on were enough to get him hooked. Every time he took his kids to the library to check out children’s books, he swung by the cooking section to grab a few cookbooks off the shelf, something he still does today. “I literally will read them like novels,” he says. “That’s how I got into baking. I’ve read so much now about troubleshooting your dough and things like that.” He kept baking, making better bread with each attempt. He was learning during the process, and the King Arthur baker’s hotline became a much-used resource. “They are so responsive over there and can talk you through anything,” he says.
Eventually, baking became second nature, and by now, he estimates he’s been baking bread for his family for eight years. “I’ve done it nonstop, and I love it,” he says. That might be an understatement. Eventually, Alex turned his love of baking into a business, Mad Love Food Company, to meet the demand for his baked goods, which has stretched far beyond the four walls of the Del Rio house. It started from word of mouth. One day, a neighbor told him that if he had any extra loaves left, she would buy some, so Alex scaled up the recipe to accommodate the request. It wasn’t long before the neighborhood was clued into the business, and the orders started rolling in.
For him, the real difference between his food and store-bought is the intentionality behind the ingredients. He describes himself as a meat-and-potatoes baker, focusing on quality over complicated recipes. “There’s so much junk out there, and it’s just not good,” he says. “I want my kids to eat good, nourishing calories, and I want my products to be the highest quality I can make.”
Alex’s baking process has evolved, and it took him a few years to fully embrace sourdough. “I was making a bunch of breads with pre-ferments, which is the same process as sourdough, just without a starter that you have to feed all the time to keep alive,” he says. “So, through that, I really understood what the process was. Then I just got to the point of saying, ‘Well, if I’m going to be baking week in, week out, let’s just go ahead and do a sourdough starter.’”
The choice to use pre-ferments and begin working with sourdough stemmed from the same place as his decision to use good-quality ingredients: having a healthier product in the end. “Besides being more flavorful, sourdough is more digestible, it’s better for your gut and it’s low-to-no sugar,” he says. “It’s still bread, but it’s the healthiest type of bread that you can eat.”
His baking is a labor of love, from feeding the starter regularly to baking upwards of 20 loaves every week to baking his waffles, which takes three days from start to finish. As he likes to say, time is an ingredient. But all of this is work in which he finds purpose, and it pays off personally when he can feed his family a nourishing breakfast, be it French toast with his from-scratch sourdough bread or a quick waffle or two in the mornings before school. “If everyone found that thing that they’re pumped to wake up and go do, this world would be a better place, right?” he says. “I want to be in this realm, and I also want to give this to my community. So that’s my why for why I’m showing up and doing all this stuff.”
As often as possible, the work at Mad Love Food Company is a family affair. In the early days, Alex’s kids used to run from door to door in their cul-de-sac in Llanfair, earning orders for the business (and a small commission from their dad). When Alex makes waffles, his kitchen doesn’t quite reflect a calm and relaxed Saturday morning breakfast-making session. He makes up to 160 waffles at a time, and by the end, the kitchen counter is covered. After the waffles are done cooling, he freezes them and then packages them up for customers. The kids also love to help in the kitchen for their own meals, dipping the bread into the French toast batter and carefully putting it in the pan, watching until it’s ready to turn.
Even with his success and suggestions that he expand, he is happy to be baking in his home kitchen. “I’ve been reluctant to open a brick-and-mortar bakery. I’m already happily married! I don’t want to be married to a bakery business!” he jokes. However, he has plans to expand his products, planning to dive into making sourdough crackers and granola. “I want to create products that make it easier for parents to pack good food for their kids to take for school lunch,” he says.
For now, he keeps selling waffles and bread to his customers and bringing goodies to his friends. “I played basketball recently with a group of guys, and when I showed up, I brought three loaves of bread,” he says. “I was like, ‘Hey guys, this is super random, but after basketball, when we’re all tired and sweaty, I brought bread!’ and they’re like, ‘Why did you bring bread?’” he laughs. It’s a good conversation starter.
Above all, fostering community is the name of the game, both in business and in life in general. He and his wife coach their kids’ CYO sports teams and are a part of the Booster Club at Corpus Christi Catholic Church, more examples of filling your plate with meaningful activities. “You change the world by impacting your community,” he says. “Just keep your foot on the gas and just keep doing the best you can.”
Banana Pain Perdu
Pain Perdu, or “lost bread,” is the French translation for French toast, referring to the past-its-prime bread originally used in French toast recipes — bread that would have been thrown away otherwise.
SERVES 4
Ingredients
3 eggs, beaten
1 cup milk
1/4 cup sugar
1/2 teaspoon cinnamon
1 teaspoon vanilla extract
1 ripe banana, mashed
8 slices stale bread
butter for cooking
Powdered sugar, for garnish
Sliced strawberries, for garnish
Directions
1. In a large bowl, blend the eggs, milk, sugar, cinnamon, vanilla extract and banana until well combined. Transfer the mixture to a shallow baking pan. Dip several slices of bread into the mixture, allowing it to soak all the way through. Flip to soak both sides.
2. In a large skillet over medium heat, melt a pat of butter sufficient to coat the pan well. Fry the saturated bread in the butter, about 2-3 minutes per side or until golden brown. Turn and repeat on the other side.
3. Remove from the skillet and place on a plate. Repeat with all the bread slices until cooked.
4. Top with powdered sugar and strawberries and serve immediately.
Mad Love Food Company • madlovefoodco.cottagecms.com
