Owner of Sonoma County's The Bagel Mill wins North Bay Forty Under 40 award

Dollars and a desk job were originally in Sonoma County resident Glenda Dougherty Manning’s sights coming out of an East Coast college.

Instead, she gravitated to another kind of “dough.”

“I had experience working in a bakery at Gold Coast Bakery in Duncans Mills, so I used that experience to get a job as a baker at Momofuku Bakery in New York. I went on to work as an assistant pastry chef at a French restaurant called Batterbsy in Brooklyn. I moved to San Francisco, where I worked in pastry at a restaurant called Game and Michael Mina’s Bourbon Steak.”

She and a friend started making whole grain baked goods as the Red Dog Baking Company, first selling them at area farmers’ markets, then, in 2019, at the Bagel Mill in Petaluma.

In a business sense, what is the greatest thing about being under 40; and then what is the worst?

“Being a young business owner allows me to bring a fresh perspective and a willingness to try new things.

“The worst thing about being under 40, is I sometimes wish I had more time to work at all the great bakeries and to gain more business acumen, perhaps by attending business school, rather than learning and problem solving on the job.