About

A Broke Baker started in 2019, in the middle of one of the most uncertain periods most of us have ever lived through.

I'd just finished university with an accounting degree — a qualification I'd worked hard for and wasn't entirely sure what to do with. The first half of 2020 brought COVID, which made the uncertainty feel even heavier. There was no clear path forward. So I started doing something I'd always found a kind of clarity in: baking.

I created a small Instagram page in 2019, not having imagined that it would become a full fledge business. It was a creative outlet — photos of experiments, things I was trying out, whatever came out of the oven on a given evening. My parents were my biggest supporters from the start, pushing me to keep going and giving me the foundation a small home-based operation needs. Without my father's savvy business advice and my mother's tireless hands-on support I doubt A Broke Baker would have ever gotten off the ground!

The shift from hobby to actual business happened because of a neighbor.

She'd heard I was baking and suggested I look into New York-style bagels. At the time, nobody in Lahore was making them properly — real bagels, hand-rolled and kettle-boiled, with the right chew and crust — weren't available in the city. I could see immediately that this was something worth pursuing.

So I got obsessive about it. I tested recipe after recipe, adjusted hydration levels, refined the boiling process, tweaked the baking temperature, until the bagel I was producing was exactly what a New York bagel should taste like. When people tried them, the response was instant.

Word spread across Lahore. Our first commercial contract followed — a B2B partnership with Tayyib Store — and that was the moment it stopped being a side project and became a real business.

Since then, A Broke Baker has grown from a one-product bagel operation into a full artisan bakery delivering across Lahore. Our range now includes multiple sourdough varieties, garden focaccia, babka, soft pretzels, brioche, brownies, muffins, and bagel sandwiches.

Everything is still made by hand, in small batches, in our kitchen. We haven't outsourced anything. We haven't cut corners on the process. The way we made our first bagels in 2019 is the way we still make them.

The name 'A Broke Baker' was never a calculated brand decision. It was just honest — a fresh graduate, baking out of passion, figuring it out as he went. It stuck. And it still fits: we're not a big commercial operation, and we're not trying to be. We're a small, careful, obsessive bakery that believes you can taste the difference when something is made properly.

Delivering across Lahore. Order before 11pm. Fresh at your door the next morning.

— Omar, Founder