Columbia woman brings baklava Down East

For Bahia Yackzan, baklava has always been a taste of home.

Now the Columbia resident, through her company Baklava by the Bay, is bringing that exotic dessert to Down East Maine.

Yackzan, 44, grew up in a multicultural household, with a Lebanese father and an Anglo-American mother.

But the story of her version of the rolled pastry treat, packed with nuts, brushed with butter and topped with a traditional Lebanese syrup, goes back even further.

Her father came to the United States to study medicine in Birmingham, Ala., where he met her mother. After they were married, they moved back to Lebanon for a time, where she learned the secrets of Lebanese cooking from Yackzan’s great-aunt Shafika.

So while Yackzan grew up around Lebanese food, it was her mother, not her father, who was the driving force in that culinary choice.

Yackzan’s childhood was an itinerant one, as her father, a professor of neurophysiology, moved from campus to campus.

Her mother’s passion for Lebanese food soon became a business. While living in California, first she sold baked goods at farmers markets, and later opened restaurants, eventually owning three. It was then that the children learned to cook as well.

“My mother would take us out of school, to help out at the restaurants,” Yackzan recalled. “I was the dessert girl.”

This skill has always been a godsend for Yackzan. She sold baklava to earn money during her college years at Sewanee: The University of the South in Tennessee. After graduating with a bachelor’s degree in philosophy, she sold the dessert to buy equipment she would need for a Peace Corps stint in Nepal. After moving to Maine 16 years ago, she again sold baklava while lining up other work.

She started her latest baklava enterprise last fall. The owners of the soon-to-open Wildflour Bakery in Steuben let her use their kitchen while she works to get her own kitchen licensed.

Yackzan, who also facilitates diversity workshops and retreats, at first tried mail order. She now has her baklava available at Mano’s Market in Hancock, the Whole Life Natural Market in Machias and the new Chicamoose Cafe in Milbridge. She’s looking for other stores, restaurants or caterers to carry her dessert.

“One reason I do this is to stay connected to that side of my heritage,” she said.

Yackzan is cautious about expanding to other Lebanese desserts.

“I need to move slowly,” she said. “If I line up a few more places, I could be really busy. If I do get busy, I do have a couple of friends that are capable and willing to help out.”

For more information about Baklava by the Bay, call 483-2992 or e-mail baklava@panax.com.