On a Wednesday morning in Richardson, Miriam Jimenez’s house smells like a bakery. That’s been true most days since she started working with a starter she built from scratch about five months ago.
“If you come to my house, you can smell the bread,” she told CraveDFW.
For a lot of Dallas diners, Jimenez is the woman with the big smile and open arms who met them at the door of Miriam Cocina Latina, the restaurant Shannon Wynne built around her across from Klyde Warren Park. These days she bakes sourdough loaves and pound cakes to order out of her own kitchen, and she sounds happier than she has in a long time.
“I feel at peace,” she said.
The road to that kitchen started in the Dominican Republic, where she grew up watching her mother cook and bake. Her first job in Dallas was waiting tables at Manny’s Uptown. From there she went on to open four restaurants for the late Mico Rodriguez, including Mesero, and it was at Mesero that Wynne first noticed her working the room. He kept coming back, and when it came time to replace Lark on the Park in 2019, he tracked her down and offered her a partnership and her name on the door.
Miriam Cocina Latina opened in May of that year with a menu that blended Tex-Mex and Mexican cooking with flavors from her island. Her mother’s recipe became the restaurant’s cabrito. There were green plantains and salmon in coconut sauce. Jimenez helped shape the menu and the operation, and she was proud of what she and her team built there.
What people remember most is the way she greeted every table. She said it never felt like work.
“We always had people in my house,” she said of growing up. “The Dominicans, we are very social, very welcoming people. So to do it in my restaurant was very natural for me.”
She left last year, and she called it one of the hardest decisions she has ever made. She had built the place from an idea and a dream, and part of her heart is still there. In the end, she said, she needed a life that would give her energy instead of taking it.
Bread came in quietly. Jimenez started baking for family and friends, leaning on what she picked up watching her mother make bread back home. There was also a more personal reason. Her son loves bread, and he has diabetes. When she switched to sourdough, she noticed his glucose stayed steadier than it did with other breads, so she kept going.
She built her own masa madre, the starter that leavens every loaf, and admits she was nervous the whole week it took to come alive. She checked on it every day, watching for signs of change. When it finally rose the way it should, she knew she had it. The starter doesn’t have a name yet.
Her first loaf had no shape at all, she said with a laugh. The second one was right, and she has kept that base recipe ever since. Lately she has been experimenting with a new starter made from banana peels. It came together in four days instead of the usual seven, and she likes it enough that she is now baking with it.
The lineup has grown from that classic sourdough. There’s a cheddar and jalapeño loaf, a cheddar and rosemary, and loaves with nuts and seeds. She also makes an almond sourdough for customers trying to cut back on gluten. That one starts with a separate masa madre made from almond flour and rice flour. It doesn’t rise as tall as a regular loaf, she said, but the flavor and moisture are there.
The sweets are where the Dominican side shows up. The guava and cream cheese pound cake is her best seller right now. Her family had a guava tree when she was growing up, and she has been cooking with the fruit for as long as she can remember. The cream cheese keeps the cake moist and balances the sweetness of the guava. She also bakes a lemon pound cake, banana bread and chocolate chip cookies.
Her week runs on a schedule any restaurant person would recognize. On Sunday, the starter sits overnight. Monday she posts the week’s menu on Instagram and Facebook and mixes dough. Tuesday the dough rests in the refrigerator overnight before she shapes and bakes it, and the orders go out Wednesday. Some customers want a whole loaf, and others ask for it sliced. On Thursday she starts the whole cycle again for Saturday.
For now, every order comes from individuals, and a lot of them are familiar faces. Plenty of her regulars from the restaurant have found her, and they’re calling in for sourdough.
She’s already thinking about what comes next. Jimenez wants to open a small deli with sandwiches on her bread, her pound cakes in the case, coffee on and tables where people can sit a while. When she does, she wants it to feel as warm and welcoming as her dining room did.
That idea goes back further than you might guess. About 20 years ago, as a student in the Dominican Republic, she wrote her thesis on opening a coffee shop that would serve coffee from three different countries alongside pastries. She forgot about it for a long time. Now she’s building something close to it.
“Life is a cycle,” she said. “You never know when you’re going to come back to your beginning.”
Ordering is simple. Jimenez bakes for pickup and delivery in Richardson on Wednesdays and Saturdays. Text her at (214) 843-5121 or send a message through her Instagram to place an order. Orders for Wednesday close Monday night, and Saturday orders close Thursday night.
Asked if there was anything else she wanted people to know, she said she has found her passion. Bread, to her, is something you share with family around a table, and she gets to make it for people every week.
