When I was fourteen, I was cutting neighbors’ lawns in Penfield Gardens, still a year away from working for our town’s rec department and two removed from my first foray in food service, day-managing an Abbott’s Frozen Custard franchise.
For the past forty years, I have been happiest in my yard or in my kitchen, though neither of those teen work experiences translated vocationally over the long run. Suffice to say, not many of us zeroed in on our chosen careers while in our teens.
Whether or not she knew it at the time, what Amy Hosking began plying when she was barely out of middle school became her beloved life’s work.
“My introduction into pastry was a little bit of a shock,” she said.
Her “whole world was surrounded by savory and culinary” when she ran into Jane Axamethy, who had “this little bakery” and asked Hosking if she was interested in working for her.
“That really opened my eyes,” Hosking said of those origin-story years at The Bake House in her hometown of Kauneonga, New York.
Seventeen years later, as Thompson Savannah’s pastry sous chef, she now oversees the boutique property’s entire baking operations.
GOOD GOLLY, MISS BIALY
Though Hosking’s title has not changed since the departure of predecessor Noah Whritenour this past Thanksgiving, she has “taken on much more responsibility,” alongside Thompson’s executive chef Victoria Shore and chef de cuisine Cameron Dempsey.
“I have definitely put more of my footprint in Stevedore as the main supervisor and leader,” said Hosking, “so all of my bakers know that I am the first line of defense.”
Opened by Whritenour and then executive chef Rob Newton, Thompson’s rez-de-chaussée bakery will turn two in June, and as the “main chef in there” now, Hosking knows that certain mainstay menu
items are already hallowed.
“I’d argue that our country sourdough would probably make that mark,” she said. “We’ve had that recipe since we opened, and it’s one of our bestsellers. People come from all across the city just to get a loaf.”
As well as being wholesaled to The Alida Hotel, Brochu’s Family Tradition, The Grey, Thrive Catering, and other high-quality establishments around town, that crusty dark brown boule is utilized throughout the hotel’s dining outlets: the firm foundation of the magnifique croque monsieur at Stevedore; the feature on a bread plate with seasonal accompaniments at Fleeting; and alongside a few breakfast entrées up top at Bar Julian.
Relatively new on the bakery’s menu are a banana multigrain muffin “on the healthier side” and Hosking’s bialy, which debuted in mid-March and has gone through four “filled with all sorts of stuff” iterations since.
“I brought that with me from New York,” she said of her take on the classic Polish Ashkenazi Jewish bread roll. “It’s like a bagel without the hole in the center. It eats just like a bagel but looks almost like a little pizza.”
“The area I grew up in had a very large Jewish influence,” Hosking continued, “so if I would go to a bakery back home, I would get a bialy with lox and cream cheese. That’s where my inspiration comes from.”
The latest Stevedore bialy was stuffed with ham and everything cream cheese and topped with mozzarella. Previous renditions were bacon-cheddar-jalapeño, pimento cheese, and traditional cream cheese.
“That’s my personal favorite,” Hosking shared, “a simple cream cheese bialy with some sea salt on top.”
Just like the old saw says, you can take the baker out of New York, but you cannot take the New York appetite out of the baker.
TRADING PINE TREES FOR PALM TREES
Hosking grew up an hour north of the Big Apple, just up the road from that farm in Bethel where half a million people gathered for three days in August of 1969.
She moved to Georgia nine years ago and got her foot in the baking door at Sea Island Resort. For nearly four years, she served as an overnight baker, followed by three more as an early morning baker.
“It was a lot of early mornings,” she recalled with a laugh, though she was quick to credit that experience. “I learned a lot there because it’s such a large property.”
In 2019, Hosking moved to Savannah and commuted up to Montage Palmetto Bluff, where she was head baker for nearly four years. What has transferred from one five-star resort to another five-star resort to her current baking home in a luxury Hyatt-family hotel is the concept of quality ingredients.
“We work really hard to make sure that what we produce is, in my opinion, the best in the city,” Hosking said. “They are made with high-quality products, and those products make all the difference in your pastries.”
“That was something that I learned at Montage,” she added. “You spend a little bit more on some chocolate, but the taste and the quality of what you’re creating is so much better.”
Having risen in the ranks, Hosking’s Thompson days typically begin closer to eight a.m. because her duties across the property require her presence in “the center” of the property’s busyness, and her team of four all-day bakers begin at four and five a.m. in staggered shifts.
“It’s calming for me,” Hosking said about her chosen pastry path. “I’ve always felt a sense of peace whenever I’m baking. I’ve always loved it.”
“All of the other shenanigans that seem to come along with the job, just day-to-day stresses, it’s all worth it at the end of the day,” she added.
“I just love what I do.”
BAKER’S PRIDE
“It’s always been something that’s brought people together,” Hosking said of her family’s food history, fondly speaking of Sunday night Italian dinners at her grandmother’s house.
“No matter what was happening in our lives, we would all come together and take the time to break bread,” she said. “I would be in the kitchen cooking with my grandmother.”
In the family, though, no one really baked, at least not like Hosking has done professionally for more than half of her life.
“Jane really introduced me to lamination and croissants and danish,” she said of her hands-on training with Axamethy at The Bake House. “That was the first job I had, producing a lot of butter croissants, pan au chocolat, ham and cheese croissants.”
Though both The Bake House and Montage saw Hosking executing similar techniques, the former was fittingly more “mom-and-pop shop” as compared to the requisite expectations at five-star five-diamond resort.
Coincidentally, the croissant varieties at Stevedore Bakery are the selfsame she used to make at The Bake House, though the methodology and ingredients are elevated, and Stevedore’s day-old bakes are given delicious second lives in twice-baked croissants and bread pudding.
All the same, Hosking’s beyond-busy new role at Thompson Savannah befits a lifetime of preparation for this moment.
“My father very much wanted both my sister and me to have a strong work ethic, so by the time we were able to get jobs, we were working,” she shared. “By that point, I had either two or more jobs until now.”
Perfect life training for a baker who has her finger in every pie at Thompson Savannah, idiomatically if not literally.
Thompson Savannah (201 Port Street) offers dining options at Fleeting (Wednesday through Sunday from 5:30 p.m. to 10:00 p.m.), Bar by Fleeting (Monday through Saturday from 2:00 p.m. to 11:00 p.m. and Sunday from 2:00 p.m. to 10:00 p.m.), Bar Julian (Sunday through Thursday from 7:00 a.m. to 10:00 p.m. and Friday and Saturday from 7:00 a.m. to midnight), and Stevedore Bakery (seven days a week from 7:00 a.m. to 3:00 p.m.)
