Lois Mass of Clear Lake has been baking bread and goodies for nearly 50 years and her little business is growing thanks to the customers she has who continually ask for fresh, favorable and healthy breads.

Mass has been selling her bread items just outside the Becker Spine Clinic in Becker for the last several months and now has permission to do the same at Bill’s Family Foods.

Mass said those with a sensitivity to gluten have tried her bread and have claimed they have no digestive problems. Wheat, barley or rye grain naturally contain the protein gluten.

“There are 27 vitamins and minerals in a little kernel of wheat,” she says. In store-bought bread, all of that has been taken out, and then they replace it with synthetic vitamins and enrichments and lots of chemicals, lots of fillers. My breads are free from all that stuff that’s unhealthy.”

Mass began baking diligently in 1976 when she lived in Littleton, CO, and started milling her own flour. She most recently lived in Brainerd and her popular breads have been such a hit that even after she moved to Clear Lake, her breads were in high demand and she’d make two trips a month to the Brainerd area to vend at Farmer’s Markets.

“I continued to drive to Brainerd twice a month through the winter into spring of 2023, all the time experiencing great fatigue on those trips at the end of the of the day,” she said. “The ‘last straw’ was when I went sound asleep at a stop light in St. Cloud on my way home. My son had a fit and told me those trips had to stop, and so they did.

Though the trips up north ceased, Mass’ bread making didn’t.  A Little Falls bakery owner once told Mass, “you’ve got to market this bread, Lois. There is nothing out there like it.” 

And she has and continues to do so.

Mass also makes caramel rolls, cookies, granola, carrot cake and angel food cake with her own flour. She also makes with it oatmeal, cranberry walnut, herb cheese, rye and onion dill breads.

Mass began selling her non-genetically modified bread at farmers markets in the summer of 2018 based on that baker’s advice. She started with one market a week and expanded to four in 2019.

Then the pandemic hit and the places Mass was selling her items started closing and she fell on hard times. But she didn’t give up and she started selling the bakery goods right there in her front yard in Colorado — and the people came.

“More and more customers appreciate this healthy bread, made with fresh flour from chemical-free, non-gmo, wheat grain, milled in my kitchen within minutes of becoming beautiful bread dough,” she says. “It’s been exciting to see more and more local people coming to buy my breads. Just as in the past at farmers markets, it’s all word of mouth. One person purchases and eats my bread, shares it with a friend or two. They are impressed, so the next week they purchase bread and tell their friends about it.  It goes on and on. They can’t help it after that first bite. It’s nothing like they have ever tasted.”

Some one asked Lois how long does she plan to do this.  Her goal is to have these healthy products, not just bread, but cookies and other goodies, of course all made with whole wheat flour, as long as her health and energy holds up. She wants the opportunity to have these available for people to experience the benefits of the wonderful nutrients in her products, and to taste a flavor they have never had in bread before. 

To get one’s hand on these scrumptious breads and bakery items, stop by Bills’ Family Foods in Becker on Thursdays from 9 a.m. to 5 p.m.