The Year Of The Cat

The James Beard Award Winner as Outstanding Pastry Chef or Baker in 2025 is Tulsa Tiger Cat Cox

In June, when the James Beard Foundation announced its winner of the award for Pastry Chef or Baker in the U.S., the foundation passed on chefs from the traditional culinary centers in New York, Chicago, Los Angeles and San Francisco, among others. And while her fellow pastry chefs may not have flinched when the owner/chef of Country Bird Bakery in Tulsa, OK was announced to accept the prize, Cat Cox was stunned to hear her name. Just six months earlier, The New York Times had named Country Bird as one of the best bakeries in the country. The lines outside the bakery have not deterred customers from waiting an hour or more for bread and pastries, and the scene is becoming more common across the land. Independent artisanal bakeries using local fresh ingredients are claiming their elevated places on the pastry landscape next to Michelin-starred restaurants. In 2025, Cox is the standard-bearer.

Tell us what that one moment was like when they called your name at the James Beard Awards. Suddenly, you’re the best baker in the country.

I would have to say it really ratcheted up my imposter syndrome. It was unreal, definitely an out-of-body experience. It was very scary to walk up there. It’s very bright and luckily you can’t see faces in the beginning until your eyes adjust and then you just see all these people looking up at you and it was a very proud moment but also very scary.

Think about all the bakeries across the country, especially in bigger cities. Did the announcement catch you off-guard?

Yeah, I’m very grateful to be recognized. The finalists in the category were all amazing, so I honestly did not think I was going to win. I wrote something just in case, because I thought on the off chance that I did have to go up there I didn’t want to not have something to say. But yeah, when I plan trips, I plan them around which bakeries I can visit. There are so many incredible bakers out there doing such good work, so I’m super excited.

Did you grow up baking all the time?

My paternal grandmother would make pies, preserve food, make jams and can things. Mmom and her mom always had to process all the peaches in the summertime and put them up for the winter. She would let me take hercookbook and make cakes or pretzels. I just kind of had this interest. I definitely had the inspiration from my grandmothers because I just thought that my grandma’s pecan pie was the best, and so I was always trying to recreate it.

You were a textile artist for a stretch. of your life. Tell me a little bit about that and how you made the transition to baking for a living.

It was really kind of by accident that it happened. I had my kind of dream job in New York at a studio that collaborates with artists in the papermaking process. I got to collaborate with some incredible artists and it really was amazing. I didn’t really picture myself living in New York forever. I kind of wanted to move back out to kind of a wide-open space, but the market crash happened. I was with a nonprofit arts organization. After some cuts, I was asked to spend some of my time in the gallery trying to sell art. I’m not a sales person. I like to get my hands in stuff.

I was thinking I would open my own papermaking studio, but that kind of fell through. I became friends with someone who had a restaurant and they needed help in the prep kitchen. I made meringues and choux pastry. They had a sourdough program, so I made their sourdough bread. So yeah, I kind of fell into it. Being in the kitchen felt familiar.

When you accepted the award, you talked about wanting to elevate the local food culture in Tulsa. How would you describe that culture?

Tulsa has a great farmer’s market. I really learned from my mentor — an amazing chef I worked for who was also a finalist this year —that it was important to stay local. I wanted to carry that over into a bakery atmosphere, especially with local grains. I really wanted to make the kind of quality food that I’d been making at restaurants, but in a bakery setting, using regionally-sourced stone mill flour. I worked at Farm Bar in Tulsa, and I worked at Living Kitchen, Farm and Dairy in Depew, Oklahoma. They are both owned by Lisa Becklund and Linda Ford. I worked at Farm Bar until February of 2020 when a fire shut us down and I decided to open my own bakery. Touching dough makes my heart happy.

What kind of fruit is in the fruit focaccia you make?

It just depends on what we have. We’ve done strawberries. We’ve done peaches with various spices. Peaches and coriander are a fun combination because that tastes like Fruit Loops cereal. We’ve done blueberries. We’ve done baked apples. It’s just what we can get our hands on.

Tell me how you came to the idea of the roasted garlic and grit loaf.

I first was making sourdough at the farm, where they do a nine-course chef tasting menu at a cabin in the woods set on 400 acres. It’s really a special experience. I had taken a workshop at a place called Smoke Signals Baking outside of Asheville, North Carolina, and we used flour from Carolina Grounds. It was just so incredible to use this stone mill flour. It opened up a world of flavor. When I came home, I couldn’t find any local flour at that time, and the whole goal of the farm is to support farmers, and so I had to figure out what I could put in the bread. The theme of one of those dinners was garlic, with some incredible garlic from the farmers. I roasted it and pureed it and mixed it into the dough. I had been experimenting with adding different porridges and I got my hands on some local cornmeal-like grits and just cooked them and added them to the bread during the bulk fermentation. Literally, it came out of necessity or lack of having access to one thing and trying to figure out what else I could put in there that was local.

How do your inspirations come to you?

Sometimes. It’s getting out of the kitchen, going to a museum and just letting my brain kind of detach from kitchen mode. Sometimes I have my best thoughts when I go for a run, because I can just turn my brain off and it just kind of flows. Getting out in nature really inspires me.

You spent some time in New York City. How would a place like Country Bird Baker work in a big city – any big city?

The quality of our products would translate as long as we could source products. Can we build relationships with farmers? What grows best? What time of the year is it? How’s the weather this year? Is it gonna be a good crop? You’d have to find your people, and your guests would have to find you. That takes a little bit of time. I couldn’t transplant my whole team, and they are so much at the heart of what we do. I’m a little bit of a perfectionist, but I feel like the quality of what we’re doing could hold its own in the bigger cities.

How often do you do workshops there? What are they?

I typically do workshops once a month. It’s generally on a Sunday when the bakery is closed because our space is very small. The most popular class is the Intro to Sourdough class. I’ve taught sourdough pizza. I’ve taught sourdough whole grain cookies. I’ve done pie workshops, I am just one person, so for now it’s just once a month.

What’s in your future?

I’m always up for using new ingredients. I feel like I am continually learning something new. We’re bursting at the seams, so we could use a little bit more space, but I’m not trying to rush anything. We’ve grown organically and slowly, so the main thing right now is quality control. And I really don’t want my team to burn out. Everyone’s getting a needed vacation, so mostly I’m trying to take care of the people who make this place great and trying to keep up our quality. I did self-publish a collaborative zine a couple of years ago and I have thought some sort of book could be a fun creative outlet. I think I’m just open to the potential of new things.

Photos by Molly Thrasher, Country Bird Bakery

(This article appeared in the Summer 2025 issue of Pastry Arts Magazine)