Lazy Crumb Baking: Baked From The Heart In An East Haven Kitchen, Then Into Her 'Bread Shed' For Pickup

EAST HAVEN, CT — Lori Klemenz of East Haven works full time as a retail manager. She has a busy husband and three grown sons. Not a lot of spare time, but the time she did have, she wanted to do something that was just for her.

"I needed a hobby of my own. Let me try sourdough, I thought," she said. "I always baked when I was younger. An Italian family with the cookies. I started with the sourdough. But I wanted the yeast to be mine."

In November of 2024, she started.

"It's just flour and water, so I began creating it in my kitchen. Cover, feed, grow." Eventually, her wild "yeastenstein" was born.

"It's my own thing. I just share my love of baking. Anyone can have a starter; not everyone can bake," she said. "You have to have a passion and a love for it."

"Trust me, I baked some bricks. You bake in a Dutch oven. Take the cover off and hope it's decent. You knock on the bottom. That day, it looked so good. I waited for it to cool, and it was so good! One down and try again. I did it again. My husband said. "Let's put some stuff in it."

Her husband, David, and sons Christopher, Zachary, and Matthew were very into it. She'd bake and bake. She'd bring baked goods to work. Her boys ate and ate. One day, a person at her job asked if they could buy a loaf. "They said it was that good."

That's when the cinnamon came in. She created her own recipes with some trial and error using a whiteboard with ideas, times, "some math," and concocted her own cinnamon rolls that she says "were the bomb."

Then, last spring, some TikTok influencers did a review. "People really like my stuff."

She'd begun the process of being licensed by the state Department of Consumer Protection as a Cottage Food Operator in July 2025. It was a laborious process but was licensed by September 2025.

Lazy Crumb Baking was born. Sourdough breads, scones, muffins, rolls, and even bagels. Some, just as is; others are packed with interesting ingredients and flavors. Onion chili crisp bread, cranberry orange walnut bread, jalapeno cheddar English muffins, brown sugar espresso scones, and her now-signature large cinnamon rolls.

And then she began to sell.

Her idea was to create a bread shed where folks would pre-order baked goods with a Thursday deadline and then pick them up from her bread shed at her East Haven home on Sunday mornings.

"Friday night it all starts. I start rolling the rolls. On Saturday at 3 am I start baking bread. By 9 a.m., I leave for my real job."

Her Facebook page includes each week's menu.

Her love for baking can be felt even on a phone call. Her passion when she speaks about baking, baking to make people happy, can be felt over phone lines.

"I love baking. But more than anything, I love making people happy. I'm so much about kindness. The world just sucks sometimes. A muffin can make you smile," she said. So on occasion, she'll tell a customer, "You've been crumbed."

"I'll throw some little extra to eat or to share. Something extra for someone. Little things like that matter."

Her business is picking up as word gets out.

"I'm not going to be a millionaire, though every little bit helps," she noted. "But I do this out of love."