For the love of noodles
Bare Naked Noodles
Chef’s Workshop
3439 Lorna Lane
305-2715
In 2011, Linda Croley and her husband went on a cruise to Alaska where they found a booth offering multiple flavors of pasta. The innovative choices included everything from black bean to chocolate.
Croley, financial advisor and longtime foodie, was inspired and ordered multiple flavors to try. Several years later, Pappardelle’s Pasta asked her to represent them in Birmingham.
Her clients enjoyed the traditional Italian-style pastas, but Croley sensed they wanted something more.
“My goal was to sell at the Pepper Place farmers market,” said Croley. “But they have a rule that what you sell has to be made in Alabama.”
In 2013, she began making her own sauces to go with the pastas, and they become an instant hit. Bare Naked Noodles was born. Today, the company provides seasonal varieties of ravioli, pastas, lasagna, and tomato and basil sauce.
Her signature line of pasta is ravioli. The dough features semolina and durum wheat flours, as well as local chicken and duck eggs. Other local ingredients include cheese from Stone Hollow Farmstead and Amelia’s Spicing Pecans, which she puts into the butternut squash ravioli for a special kick. Unique raviolis include collards and spicy sausage, the butternut squash pecan, “buttons” and bacon, and golden beet, goat cheese and pecans.
Croley’s pastas and sauce are available in local stores such as Piggy Wiggly, Western Supermarket, The Pantry, Williams-Sonoma in addition to local farmers. She is also available for catering.
Croley and her team work out of Chef’s Workshop in Hoover. Bob Lepley opened the unique food incubator in April 2013. The facility gives caterers, bakers, mobile food vendors and specialty food product makers a location in which they can comply with health regulations and obtain proper permits to conduct their food business. The 5,000-square-foot facility houses four private, professionally equipped commercial kitchens available for rent on an hourly, daily or monthly basis.
Croley moved to Hoover in the early 1990s and has enjoyed seeing the community grow over the years. She hopes to eventually open a storefront of her own and has looked in places in Mountain Brook and Vestavia Hills.
The chef also enjoys traveling, having been to a variety of food festivals across the country. She plans to travel to Italy this spring where she will participate in several pasta-making classes and bring her ideas back to the U.S.
“I’m just following my dream of making great pasta in Birmingham,” Croley said.
For more information, visit barenakednoodles.net.