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Seemingly out of the blue, Soumya Seemakurti decided to leave her accounting job last year to pursue a career in something she loved a whole lot more: desserts.
“Over the years, I just loved baking more and more,” she says. “I like accounting too, but accounting is accounting. There’s one I like and one I love more.”
Soumya is the owner behind home bakery Gully Bakehouse, where she bakes desserts inspired by Indian flavors. Her sweets are comforting and familiar, but also new. Think chai chocolate chip cookies, saffron tres leches, rose tiramisu and berry masalay crumb cakes.
“It’s sort of an adventure,” she says. “You may like it, you may not. But it’s fun to go on an adventure.”
Though Soumya dabbles with new flavors, it’s important to her to respect the original delicacy.
“My main thing is it’s fusion. When someone is trying to taste something new, it always helps to have a familiar element in it — it might be a texture, it might be a flavor. It’s respecting the original dessert, but elevating it with a different flavor. The beauty of a cannoli is the crunchy shell and the creamy feeling. Without those, it’s not a cannoli anymore. I try not to get super aggressive with the flavors — delicate calls for delicate.”
Soumya’s baking journey began after the loss of her mom when she was almost 20 years old.
“It was not an easy situation, so I think I was just trying to figure out what would help me move forward. I guess I picked (baking) up as a hobby,” she says. “For me growing up, cake was a special treat once in a while. Making a cake was also a huge deal — it probably happened once every two years.”
She remembers the day she walked into a bakery and tried her first black forest cake.
“That was it,” she says.
She learned to bake mostly on her own, with the help of a few cookbooks. She lived in India at the time, where having a traditional oven wasn’t the norm, so she purchased a tiny version that barely fit an 8-inch cake pan.
Then came 2010. Soumya moved out of India when her husband received a job offer in France. She lived there for a year, enamored by the world of pastries. After that, she and her husband packed up for Minneapolis, followed by a stint in Austin, Texas, and then Tucson in 2014.
Two years later, she accepted an accounting job.
“(Last year,) I was like, maybe this is the time to take a break. It was out of the blue, to be honest. There was no big reason,” she says. “It was scary, I’m not going to lie. There’s no one to give me a paycheck at the end of the month. It was daunting, no doubt, but it’s been one year and I’ve learned a lot.”
When she first made the pivot into baking, her business was called Cozy Crumbles — while the sweets were delicious, the concept lacked a bit of direction.
“With Gully Bakehouse, you know what to expect. It’s fusion. There aren’t many traditional recipes — not that I don’t like traditional recipes. You give me a brownie, you give me a tiramisu, I’ll enjoy myself to the core,” she says. “Cozy Crumbles was to test the waters. I wasn’t sure what people liked.”
It was at a market in Tucson Mall when she brought sweets made with rose and saffron — and she sold out.
“I had a couple customers who came back in the same day,” she says. “I was like, ‘This is definitely something people like.’”
She officially launched Gully Bakehouse in September of this year and she’s spent a lot of time researching and experimenting with new recipes to thoughtfully blend French baking with American classics and Indian flavors. (She also had a sold-out day when she vended at Tucson Foodie’s Asian Night Market in October.)
“There are always dos and don’ts and despite the research, some do not turn out so great,” she says. “Generally I take the traditional flavor profiles and think, ‘What would happen if I introduce a new flavor with these two? What happens if I put cardamom in place of cinnamon?’ Even the smallest of changes can create much bigger effects.”
The customer favorite so far has been the saffron tres leches. Her personal favorite is the rose lychee tiramisu.
While you’ll be able to get some of Gully Bakehouse’s sweets shipped to you in coming months, for now you can find Soumya at pop-ups around town. She’s often seated with her 11-year-old daughter who helps with packaging and loves to hand out samples at markets. (She’s not interested in baking, but she does love to make jewelry.)
“It makes my day when (customers) enjoy the desserts,” Soumya says. “I just hope they enjoy them and are open to the flavors.”
🍪 For more information about Gully Bakehouse and to see where Soumya will be next, visit her website and Instagram. Upcoming events include Made in Tucson on Nov. 30. 🇮🇳
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