Valeria Garcia. Photos courtesy of Valosh.
It hasn’t been easy, but Valeria Garcia is finally on the way to attaining her dream.
Valosh Pâtisserie opened in early May in downtown Elizabethtown, offering beyond-the-ordinary baked delights, such as rhubarb and strawberry millefeuille, lemon and lavender cake and peanut brioche.
At Valosh, Garcia, 27, creates fine French pastries flavored with a kick of her native Puerto Rico. For now, she employs no other workers but aspires to hire some staff by the end of the year.
“(My) pastries are made in low sugar,” she said. “The Puerto Rican part is using certain spices and such fruits like mango, passion fruit and figs in some recipes. The custards are technically French.”
Garcia studied her craft at École Nationale Supérieure de Pâtisserie in France, enrolling in a pastry arts program “that my mom and dad helped me pay, with much sacrifice,” she said. During her studies, French classmates translated Garcia’s first name as “Valosh,” today the source of her bakery’s moniker.
Unfortunately, soon after starting the program, things took a turn for the worse. That same month, in September 2017, Hurricane Maria slammed into Puerto Rico, an event that “changed my family’s finances,” she said. As a result, she could only complete one year of the school’s three-year pastry program.
“I tried to search for loans, grants, scholarships and millions of other ways to fund my last two years, but I didn’t have any luck,” Garcia recalled. “After that, I had a hard time accepting it, and I felt like a failure for one or two years.”
Despite not finishing the school’s full course, Garcia had learned enough to acquire some serious baking chops.
“I still had the hope that my pastry shop would come one day,” she said.
She soon moved to Maryland with a friend, but, after awhile, surmised there was “nothing there” for her and relocated to Harrisburg with her boyfriend, Luis Melendez.
In Harrisburg, Garcia, who had studied accounting in Puerto Rico, got a job working in banking. She already knew English well after attending bilingual school in Puerto Rico, so language wasn’t a barrier.
In the meantime, she never let go of her dream. In 2021, she began selling her pastries online from her home in Harrisburg, which proved to be a success.
“Valeria is the kind of person who keeps on doing stuff until she gets what she wants,” said her older sister, Gabriela Garcia. “She’s very creative. Since she was a little girl, she’s always wanted to bake.”
After a year in Harrisburg, Garcia decided that she “wanted to get out of the city and live in the country.” So, she relocated to Elizabethtown, where she was able to secure financing to establish her dream brick-and-mortar bakery in the quaint borough.
“Elizabethtown has a certain vibe like my hometown in Puerto Rico,” Garcia said. “It has a downtown where you can walk around. It has hospitality.”
As much as she loves her craft, Garcia readily admits that, sometimes, it’s not easy to run a bakery all by herself. So far, her biggest business challenge has been “getting used to the amount that I have to bake.”
“Yesterday, I made three different desserts, and it took me 12 hours to get it all done,” she said.
At that point, she still was in the process of mixing all of her recipes by hand and using a single-capacity oven, limiting her yield. However, she was in the process of purchasing a mixer and a double oven for her business.
For the time being, Garcia’s only help at the bakery is Melendez, who runs the cash register until staff is hired, hopefully later this year.
Despite her many challenges past and present, Garcia maintains an unwavering love for creating fine pastries.
“With baking, I can disconnect from everything,” she said. “It’s a form of therapy that allows me to be in the moment. Then when you serve it to people, seeing the expressions on their faces is just amazing.”
Valosh Pâtisserie is located at 23 E. High St., Elizabethtown. For more information, visit www.tastevalosh.com.
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