Meet the Owners
Maria and Chris Holbrow are the husband-and-wife team behind Forgotten Flavours Bakery
They are proudly rooted in Niverville, Manitoba. Originally from Winnipeg, they relocated to this small, close-knit community to focus on health, wellbeing, and creating a nurturing environment for their young children.
Starting a business was never part of their plan — but as they grew to love their new home, they saw an opportunity to share something meaningful with their neighbours. From that vision, Forgotten Flavours was born.
Our Mission
We’ve forgotten more than we know, what natural ingredients taste like, how to properly use them, and how they are supposed to make us feel. We strive to change this, by bringing nature’s ingredients and forgotten methods to the heart of everything we do.
Our Vision
Source Local, Make Healthy, Be Happy.
Our Values
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One of the best investments you’ll ever make, are those that are made towards your health.
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Show Respect, Humility and Integrity to everyone.
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Quality to us means, using the best ingredients, following the right processes, and providing exceptional service.
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Top of mind focus on environmentally sustainable practices.
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Source local when and where possible.
Who We Are
Maria
Maria is the heart and hands behind the creations at Forgotten Flavours. As the Product Creator, she blends her love of science and the arts into every bake — crafting nourishing, delicious treats that are as beautiful and indulgent as they are wholesome.
Chris
Chris guides the mission, vision, values, and operations of Forgotten Flavours. With years of experience in big box retail, corporate strategy, and operational leadership, he brings the structure and strategy that support the bakery’s growth and long-term sustainability.
Our Story
Maria and Chris relocated from Winnipeg to Niverville, Manitoba, with the intention of slowing life down and focusing on wellbeing for themselves and their children.
Chris, a senior leader in the corporate sector, balanced his career in Winnipeg with family life in Niverville. Maria, a stay-at-home mom, devoted what little spare time she had to baking — a passion first ignited years earlier when Chris’s mom introduced her to the craft. She especially loved bringing to life the cherished flavours of her childhood in Eastern Europe, weaving those memories into everything she baked.
Much to her dismay, Chris couldn’t enjoy many of her creations due to chronic digestive issues he’d had since childhood, often triggered by certain foods — especially wheat grains. Being relatively new to Canada, and unfamiliar with many North American food practices, Maria began researching why bread and other traditional foods seemed to cause so many problems for her husband.
Her curiosity eventually led her to the art of fermentation. She began experimenting with sourdough — a clear step up from store-bought breads — but it still triggered Chris’s symptoms.
Then, a childhood memory resurfaced: as a young girl, she had watched her great-grandmother make bread not from the usual flour-and-water mixture, but from fruit. That spark of recollection ignited Maria’s pursuit of recreating and mastering a long-forgotten tradition — the art of wild yeast.
In 2022, Maria and Chris completed the transformation of their first Micro-Bakery — a cozy 600-square-foot commercial kitchen tucked into the walk-out basement of their home. The vision was simple: create a part-time venture Maria could run while caring for their children, and share her newly perfected wild yeast bread with the community. Nutritious, delicious, and deeply rooted in tradition, her bread quickly gained a loyal following.
Equipped with modest baking equipment and a two-deck commercial oven, Maria baked two days a week, posting her creations online. When Chris returned from work, the two would head out together, hand-delivering warm, fresh loaves to their customers’ doors.
Word quickly spread, and what began as a small, local offering grew into a thriving community favourite. The success of those early experiments, final products, and heartfelt service planted the seeds for what would eventually become Forgotten Flavours Bakery — a place where tradition meets innovation, and where every creation is made with care for both flavour and wellbeing.
What Makes Our Products Different?
At Forgotten Flavours, our mission is simple: to revive the time-honoured art and science of baking with wild yeast and long fermentation, using only the finest local organic ingredients.
Every wild yeast product we make undergoes a 48-hour fermentation process, crafted with our own cultivated cultures and fresh-milled Manitoba grains.
This slow, natural process not only enhances flavour and texture — it also helps break down many of the enzymes, gluten, and carbohydrates in grains that can trigger negative reactions in the body or block the absorption of essential nutrients. The result is bread and baked goods that are as nourishing as they are delicious.