Laura Ohm

La Musette is Laura's brain-child. Laura learned to love food as a kid in Wisconsin.  She would roam the backyards with neighborhood kids, poaching cherry tomatoes, chives and green beans from the large vegetable gardens planted by her old Polish neighbors and her mom, Joan, herself a fine cook and baker. 

After college, head filled with romantic and literary visions of the South, Laura moved to North Carolina where she talked her way into a baking job at a budding artisan bakery.  At Weaver Street she learned the vagaries of yeast, the quiet appeal of very early hours, and the need for good shoes.

Laura fell in love and moved to the Eastern Sierra in California to be with Fred.  There she cooked and baked professionally. She also occasionally backpacked loads up Mt. Whitney for pay. 

In 1998 Fred and Laura moved to Portland where Laura quickly joined the Grand Central Baking bread crew.  Since then she has baked bread and pastry, cooked, developed recipes and helped create the Commissary. 

Laura has taught classes in California and Oregon, and has appeared in numerous publications.  She has made everything from corn-dogs to home-cured pancetta to Szechuan clay-pot pork, with an almost equal amount of pleasure. She is also a pretty good cyclist.

Robin Rosenberg

Robin Rosenberg grew up in Southeastern Connecticut and learned how to operate a lobster cracker before she could say 'lobster'. After a requisite stint as a vegetarian in high school and college, she moved to Portland Oregon in 1994 to produce a public access cooking show called "Eat Me". In 2000, she opened up Crowsenberg's Half & Half, a sliver of a cafe in downtown Portland that kept bike messengers, architects, book sellers and artists fed and caffeinated for nearly a decade. Three years ago, Robin left the daily operations at Half & Half for a career outside of the food industry. Today, she works as a creative resource strategist at Wieden+Kennedy, writes about for her blog chronicmastication.com, and makes homemade meals for her dog, Victor.

John Grochau

John grew up in Portland and watched his backyard evolve into a world-class wine area. After years of selling wine at some of Portland's finest restaurants, including a 13-year stint at Higgins, it was John's desire to learn the craft behind the wines he loved and to try and approach the process of making wine with the same blend of curiousity, respect and excitement that he feels when drinking it. He races a bike sometimes, too.

Fred Lifton

Fred helped Laura develop La Musette, mostly by eating stuff and then giving a thumbs-up. He also likes to ride his bike and his mom is French. Fred has a blog about being a cyclist named Fred, which isn't easy.