Fresh Every Morning: How Family Tradition Inspired the Dream Behind Baked by Chelle

NOW OPEN IN MELBOURNE

The aroma of freshly baked pastries begins filling Baked by Chelle long before the sun rises. While most of Melbourne is still asleep, Michelle Franzen is already hard at work, carefully preparing dozens of pastries by hand—continuing a family tradition that began generations ago in an Italian kitchen.

For Michelle, baking isn’t simply a career. It’s a way of honoring the woman who first inspired her love for food—her grandmother.

Growing up on Long Island, New York, Michelle and her siblings shared more than just a neighborhood with their grandparents. They shared a home.

“My grandparents, who were of Italian descent from Naples, lived upstairs from us my entire life,” Michelle says. “My grandmother would wake up already thinking about breakfast, lunch, and dinner. She never believed in sitting around or doing things for herself. Everything she did was for others.”

Her grandmother’s kitchen was always alive with activity, but nowhere was that more evident than during the Christmas season.

“Italian Christmas was everything and more,” Michelle recalls. “Our family hosted every year, and my grandmother prepared the traditional Feast of the Seven Fishes on Christmas Eve, followed by a huge Italian meal on Christmas Day.”

Then came the cookies.

“She spent the entire month of December baking every traditional Italian Christmas cookie you could imagine. Watching her made such an incredible impact on me. I knew from a very young age that this was what I wanted to do.”

Determined to turn that childhood dream into a career, Michelle moved to Florida and enrolled at Le Cordon Bleu, where she earned her Associate of Arts degree before beginning her career as a professional chef. She eventually found her true passion as a pastry chef, spending five years refining her skills before deciding it was finally time to open her own bakery.

“I finally felt confident enough to take the leap,” she says.

That dream became reality with the support of two of the people closest to her.

“My husband and my twin brother have both been there to help me every step of the way.”

Today, Baked by Chelle is more than a neighborhood bakery—it’s the realization of a lifelong dream rooted in family, faith, and tradition.

Every morning begins at 4:00 a.m., when Michelle starts baking from scratch.

“I make everything fresh every single morning,” she says. “I bake about 50 to 60 of each pastry. When we sell out, I try to make more, but everything we serve is always fresh.”

That commitment to quality is one of the bakery’s defining characteristics. There are no shortcuts—only carefully crafted pastries made with the same dedication Michelle watched her grandmother pour into every meal.

“This is more than just a job to me,” Michelle says. “It’s my dream, and it’s an honor to follow in the footsteps of my grandmother.”

In a world where family traditions are often pushed aside by busy schedules and everyday demands, Michelle hopes Baked by Chelle becomes a place where those traditions can live on.

“Today, so many traditions disappear because of time, work, and money,” she says. “I want to keep those traditions alive and share with people what my family taught me.”

With every croissant, pastry, cookie, and baked treat that leaves her kitchen, Michelle is serving more than dessert. She’s sharing generations of Italian heritage, family values, and the belief that food has the power to bring people together.

If the steady stream of customers walking through the doors is any indication, Melbourne has already developed a taste for the tradition.