Violet Jones from Los Poblanos in New Mexico has baking in her DNA, thanks to her Grandma Linda. Diners at Campo, and the restaurant at in Los Poblanos, are the beneficiaries of the savoir-faire she expresses in a broad and colorful spectrum of desserts and baked goods—many of them featuring local heritage grains. Regional Editor Julia Leonard and Contributing Editor Tira Howard spent some quality time with Violet, tasting, talking, and enjoying.
Baking Up a Storm at Los Poblanos
We should all be so lucky to have a Grandma Linda— the kind of grandmother who bakes pies like there’s no tomorrow, preserves fruit—filling basement shelves with jars ready to be cracked open on a cold, winter’s day—and always seems to be sliding something into the oven, or taking something out. The kind of person who would gladly allow you to peel an apple, stir the batter, lick the bowl, or just watch, absorb, and learn.
Violet Jones is that lucky person, so it’s not surprising that baking is in her DNA. Today, the Los Poblanos bakery is her home and test kitchen where she works with heritage grains, crafting recipes that use every bit of the grain with ingenious results.
New Inventions in the Los Poblanos Kitchen
Take Los Poblanos’ croissants. They use discard from their sourdough starter and put it back into the croissant dough, along with some of the middlings— the bits of wheat bran, germ, and flour that are left over after the milling process—from heritage Sonora wheat, a drought-tolerant variety that is grown and milled in New Mexico. “If you look at our croissants, especially the dough before they’re baked, it has little speckles, almost like freckles on the dough, which is so cool,” Violet Jones says.
Middlings find their way into other goodies too— from the Farm Shop Sonora wheat cookie, to loaves of bread, as well as butter, lavash, and seeded shortbread crackers. Using all of the grain is an important part of the ethos of Los Poblanos and one Jones embraces, “We want to use all aspects of the fruits and vegetables that we grow here, but we also want to use all aspects of the grains. Where people might discard that (the middlings), we’re utilizing absolutely the whole grain,” says Jones.
Jones Utilizes Underrated New Mexico Ingredients
There is a joyful geekiness about Jones when she talks about her work—someone who delights in the science, math, and precision of baking—balancing that exactness is a sense of play as she creates a new dessert, literally from scratch.
Take her Atole Panna Cotta, a dish she recently introduced at Campo when we met. She starts with fresh, nixtamalized, yellow corn masa and cinnamon for the base. Then she adds blue corn chiffon cake crumb, a whey-caramel reduction with sifted, blue corn kernels, and a blue corn brittle, made from blue corn kernels. It’s a masterful blend of flavors and textures that uses every bit of the corn for stunning results.
Speaking with Jones, you get the clear sense that she is where she belongs. She graduated from high school early, already knowing that she wanted to be a pastry chef. She went to culinary school, and lived and worked in Minneapolis, Minnesota. When the pandemic hit, she and her then boyfriend, now husband, sold everything and hit the road. Arriving in New Mexico, she searched the internet for the best places to eat and read about Los Poblanos and Campo, which had just reopened.
“It was the most amazing dinner I’ve ever had, truly,” she says. Not only did they have a great meal, but Los Poblanos also kindly let them park their van in the parking lot and spend the night. “I said to my husband, ‘If they are ever hiring in the pastry department, I will move to New Mexico for this job,’” she says. Good to her word, she and her husband jumped at the chance to move when a job opened up at Los Poblanos.
Beginning and Ending with Jones’ Baking
Jones delights in the idea that diners can begin their meal with bread from the Los Poblanos bakery and end with a dessert—a perfect culinary journey. And she knows that dessert not only satisfies hunger, but nourishes the soul. “I think there’s something special about a dessert that can kind of make people feel a certain way,” says Jones. It’s joy and nostalgia and memories all wrapped up in a single plate. “I think my favorite part about dessert is that we are the final thing that they’re going to have. Dessert should be its own course. It shouldn’t be an afterthought. It shouldn’t be a last-minute decision.”
And what does Grandma Linda think about her granddaughter? Jones beams, “I think she could not be prouder.”
Story by Julia Platt Leonard / Photography by Tira Howard
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