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Juli Vanderhoop and the Orange Peel Bakery
In her teens, when Juli Vanderhoop was walking home from shooting hoops in Aquinnah, she’d often stop into the police station to hang out with her friend, Officer Harold Hill.
“One day,” she says, “Harold said to me, ‘Juli, you’re a senior. What are you gonna do with your life?’ I said I didn’t know. He said, ‘Are you gonna be like the other kids, go to Boston or Rhode Island, and come home on weekends to do your laundry?’ I said maybe. He said, ‘Don’t do that. If you’re gonna go someplace, then go. Don’t place limits on yourself. Go and really experience the world.’”
No one, Juli says, had ever said anything like this to her before, and years later, when Harold died, she went to his funeral so she could stand up and tell people that Harold had changed her life.
Juli took to heart Harold’s advice about “experiencing the world,” leaving the Island at 17 to move to Florida, and later Arizona, where she attended two branches of Embry-Riddle Aeronautical University — a school made famous by the rumor (later discredited) that one of the 9/11 bombers had learned to fly there. At 20, she moved to Long Island, where she finished her commercial pilot’s certification at American Flyers in Islip, after which she completed a degree in aeronautical engineering at the Wentworth Institute of Technology in Boston. Then she went to work in the air.
“I flew all over the place,” Juli says, “up and down the East Coast, sometimes for corporate things, sometimes flying charters ferrying captains to and from their boats. Then, when I came back here, I could say that I’d gone out and understood what it was, this United States, because I’d flown all over it.”
When a heart murmur diagnosis ended her flying career, Juli went into early childhood education for a time, but at 40, after her marriage of 12 years ended, she moved back to the Vineyard. “My mom [Anne Vanderhoop] got it,” Juli says, regarding her split with her husband. “She said, ‘You’re just such a thinker; you can’t be honed into that box. You have to make yourself more available.’” By “available,” she meant not to other men, but to the world, and particularly to her home community in Aquinnah.
Juli went to work at the Aquinnah Shop, the restaurant founded by the family of her mother’s second husband, Luther Madison. This was not new terrain for Juli, whose first job, at nine years of age, was manning the restaurant’s hot dog roller. Back again as an adult, she worked as the restaurant’s executive chef and planned and oversaw a thorough overhauling of its kitchen. “The Aquinnah Shop was home,” Juli says.
After a few years, Juli began looking for something she could do independently. “And this is what I came up with,” she says, indicating with a sweep of her arm the Orange Peel Bakery’s campus, with its iconic stone oven, its comfortable outdoor seating (which was being set up for the season as I talked with Juli in mid-May), and its shed where customers buy baked goods (and other items, including honey from Juli’s bees) on the honor system. Baking was a skill Juli had been honing throughout her lifetime, starting in childhood, at the Aquinnah Shop, where she watched her mother and stepfather collaborate on pie-making: Anne made the pie crusts, and Luther filled them. In the wintertime, she says, her mother liked to experiment with baking at home, and Juli was at her side, learning by helping, and through observation and osmosis. Now — Orange Peel aficionados, take note! — she’s working on a cookbook.
Juli built her stone oven herself, aided by two stonemasons. In 2005, while working with some award-winning bread chefs in North Rehoboth, she’d seen a similar oven and fallen in love. “I knew then that I was going to give it a try,” she says. “Try” is the important word here, because Juli says it took her about five years to master cooking with a fire in an outdoor oven. “I had no clue how to do it at first,” Juli says, but over time, she learned through trial and error. Now, she estimates that 90% of what she bakes is done in the stone oven, but she won’t bake cakes in it, explaining, “It makes me too nervous.”
But overall, she’s become comfortable working with fire — a skill with which her ancestors were familiar. Before it became illegal to do land burnings, Juli notes, the Indigenous people used to burn their agricultural fields regularly. “And you know what it did?” she asks. “It took the ticks away. And now look where we are. I’ve been bitten today already.”
We need to work in balance, with a broad view of where we’re standing. It starts with the earth, and if Mother Earth does not feed us, then we die. We need to maintain the ancient knowledge, to try to work and live with reciprocity.
– Juli Vanderhoop
“Pizza was my testing ground for other baked goods,” she says, referring to the bakery’s wildly popular pizza parties, where customers can eat in or take home pizza, hot and sizzling, straight from the oven. “I’d put out samples [scones, cookies, croissants, cakes], and when there were just crumbs left on a plate, I’d take that as a ‘yes’.”
Orange Peel’s pizza evenings and afternoons (scheduled this year for Wednesdays, Thursdays, and Fridays) have become so popular that attendance now is by reservation only — see contact info on her website. “We need to cap it at 50 people,” Juli says, “or the lines just get too long.” This year, customers can again bring toppings to create their own pies — a practice that Juli shut down during Covid but now feels it’s safe to reinstate.
When you stop in at the bakery, you’re likely to find baked goods containing seasonal ingredients grown right on the property — cheddar cheese and chive scones with Juli’s chives, pies made with her rhubarb, cakes garnished with delicate blueberry blossoms from her bushes. “Blueberry blossoms are also delicious in a salad,” Juli says, “along with some foraged dandelion greens.”
Foraging, she points out, has long been central to the Indigenous community in Aquinnah. “If they didn’t go fishing the day before,” Juli says, “they might not have dinner tonight.” But of course, taking from the land and the sea went hand-in-hand with an awareness of the importance of conservation. “We need to work in balance, with a broad view of where we’re standing. It starts with the earth, and if Mother Earth does not feed us, then we die. We need to maintain the ancient knowledge, to try to work and live with reciprocity.”
A friend told Juli that in the 1960s, her father made her ride her bicycle from Oak Bluffs to Aquinnah, because he wanted her to understand what earlier Indigenous people had to do when they needed supplies they couldn’t get by foraging. But now, thanks to Juli, there’s a place in Aquinnah where the locals can get a pie, a loaf of bread, or a cinnamon roll. And there’s always a lot of traffic in and out of the Orange Peel Bakery. Several vehicles and their passengers came and went during my 45-minute, pre-season visit. Sometimes, visitors are drawn in by the aromas of what’s baking in the oven. “One of my first customers was riding by on a bike, on his way to the beach,” Juli says. “He stopped at the end of the driveway and yelled up to me, ‘Hey! Are you baking something with chocolate?’ And I said, ‘Yeah. I’ve got some chocolate croissants that just came out of the oven. Come try one.’”
And everyone wants to talk to Juli. She cuts a wide swath in her community, not only as the owner of Aquinnah’s only bakery, but also as a town selectperson and a tribal elder. “My elders would call me an elder-in-training, an EIT,” she says with a laugh. “The respect comes to you because of what you’ve learned over the course of your life, what you can hand down to the next generations. You’re holding your people inside of you; you’re a member of this community, this Tribal community, here on our territorial homeland, and you’re holding the history of this Island.”
The property on which Orange Peel sits is ancient tribal land. “It’s been in my family since prior to the breakup of Indigenous lands by the state, and it’s never been sold,” Juli says, “not once out of this family. That in itself is a very strong energy force.” The name of the property is Blackbrook, which is also the name of the stream flowing through it. Once, Juli saw an eel in her pond, and she asked her brother, Buddy, how it might have gotten there. Buddy explained that the pond is fed by three springs above ground, and two underground springs that pass beneath State road, and that the whole system connects to the ocean. Which led Juli to conclude that her property sits on sacred space — that it’s a meeting ground not just for multiple springs, but also for spirits.
“My stepfather said that when I light my fire in the oven, the connection between the smoke and the water nearby is a place that holds the ancestors,” she says.
Juli has heard accounts of people in the old days, driving oxen and horses by the property, who noticed that the horses would spook and the oxen slow down or downright stop and refuse to move. “Large animals can feel the spirits,” Juli says, “they knew there were spirits here.” She tells a story of hearing drumming coming from nowhere one night, and how, once she said out loud “I recognize your presence,” the drumming slowly faded away.
On a visit to New Zealand in 2019, Juli learned about the Maori concept of “mana,” which has to do with spiritual power, influence, and authority. People with high mana are expected to be responsible and accountable, and to continue building their mana through their actions. “The wealth is that you want to give to other people,” she says. And give she does, hosting lunches three days a week for the Tribe’s elders, for example. “It’s an honor to bring good, healthy food to people that you love,” she says. Mana, she explains, is in artistry, in food, in the land, and in history. “I’ve been given so much,” Juli says, “from my mother, my grandfather, my ancestors… all these wonderful gifts and the mana they hold. Here at the Bakery, people come together over the table, sharing food and creativity, laughter and love. We’re trying to do all we can every day to bring that message to the world.”
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RECIPE: Peach Rhubarb Pie
- Yield: Serves 8
Description
At the Orange Peel Bakery, Juli uses rhubarb grown right on the property. Find out if you can forage rhubarb near you, or head to your local farmer’s market to support local growers and get the freshest produce (pick up peaches too!) without the environmental cost of food miles.
Ingredients
- 3 1/2 cups sliced peaches
- 3 1/2 cups rhubarb, cut in 3/4-inch pieces
- 1 1/2 cups sugar
- 3 Tbsps cornstarch
- 2 tsps cinnamon
- 3/4 tsp nutmeg
- 2 pie crusts
- 1 egg, lightly beaten
Instructions
- Preheat oven to 350℉.
- In a large bowl, stir together the peaches, rhubarb, sugar, cornstarch, cinnamon, and nutmeg. Pour the mixture into one of the pie shells.
- With a fork, make vent holes in the second pie crust, and then place it on top of the filled pie tin. Pinch the edges together with the top of the lower crust to create a tight seal.
- Brush the top of the pie with the beaten egg.
- Bake the pie for 50 to 60 minutes, until it’s golden brown on top, and juices are bubbling up around the edges.
RECIPE: Rhubarb Ginger Scones
- Yield: Makes 12–16 1x
Description
At the Orange Peel Bakery, Juli uses rhubarb grown right on the property to make these scones. If you don’t have any in your garden this year, head to your local farmer’s market to support local growers and get the freshest product without the environmental cost of food miles. Better yet, find out if you can forage forgotten rhubarb near you!
Ingredients
- 5 eggs, divided
- Scant 5 1/2 cups flour (1 1/2 lbs)
- 1/2 cup + 1 Tbsp sugar
- 3 Tbsps baking powder
- 2 tsps salt
- 1/2 lb butter, chilled
- 1 1/4 cup buttermilk
- 1 cup diced candied ginger
- 1 1/2 cups rhubarb, diced small
Instructions
- Preheat oven to 375℉. Line two baking sheets with parchment paper.
- In a small bowl, lightly beat two of the eggs and set aside.
- In a large bowl, mix together the flour, sugar, baking powder, and salt.
- Using a fork or a pastry blender, cut in the butter, leaving some chunks about the size of a nickel.
- Lightly beat the remaining 3 eggs, and stir them, the buttermilk, ginger, and rhubarb into the dry ingredients, mixing only until just combined.
- With a large spoon, scoop out portions equal in size to about 3/4 cup and space them evenly on the two baking sheets. Brush the tops with the set-aside eggs.
- Bake for 20 to 25 minutes until the tops are golden brown.
