Melissa Allred

Melissa teaches preschool during the day and bakes the rest of the time. She came to cookies through bread, which she got into because it's a system you can measure and improve. She started tracking dough behavior the same way, and after watching one too many cookie exchanges full of the same grocery-store tins, a friend from the ward talked her into teaching. She's not a decorator and she'll say so. What she's good at is the dough and the bake: why it spread, why it's dry, how to fix it. She teaches the way she runs a preschool room, plainly and without pretending she has it all figured out.