Isabela Moraes stands in a tent stall at a farmers market in Anthem, greeting customers who pause in front of piles of sourdough, bundles of baguettes and other specialty breads like fougasse and focaccia. Eyes dart from bread to marquee, and hands reach for wallets. It’s a “steady” day for Moraes, who sells her professionally baked Bread Day creations at various farmers markets across town.

She got the idea from her colleagues—not from bakers or chefs, but from those she used to work with when she was a synchronized swimmer performing on the Las Vegas Strip. “I started baking for my fellow cast members, a very international crowd,” Moraes says. “Whenever I didn’t have rehearsals, I would find time to bake. So, each week, ‘bread day’ was a different day—whether it was Sunday or Friday, it was just ‘bread day,’ the day I was making bread.”

The name has stuck since her days as a full-time swimmer in Wynn’s Le Rêve. It was one of the first Strip shows to close as the pandemic began in early spring 2020. Wynn eventually furloughed performers in May before announcing the show’s permanent closure in August, leaving 275 crew members out of work.

It was a letdown for many of the cast, she says, especially those who had just begun performing with the show. But after a 14-year “fun and stable” run with Le Rêve, Moraes says the show’s ending gave her the push she needed to “dive in” to breadmaking—a passion she had been feeding on the side for more than a decade.

“For me, it was a push to follow through with another passion,” she says. “It’s funny, because now, I have side gigs as a synchronized swimmer—events or coaching jobs. Now, I’m a full-time baker and part-time mermaid.”

In 2008, while working for the show full time, Moraes enrolled in pastry classes at the College of Southern Nevada. To further refine her skills, she took additional courses in San Francisco and other breadmaking destinations, while also training with some of the Strip’s finest pastry chefs. “I was happy I found something I really loved—as much as I loved swimming,” she recalls.

From professional swimmer to pastry student, and from pastry student to professional baker, Moraes says understanding her skills and being flexible were key to her transition. Her advice for others who lost jobs due to the pandemic? Try to transfer lessons, knowledge and experience from the previous career to the new one, even if the careers aren’t related. “Training, practice, repetition are very much a part of what I used to do and what I do now,” she says.

Much like a sourdough starter, feeding her interest has yielded dividends in setting up a new career path. Since taking the plunge into full-time baking, she has converted her at-home kitchen into a registered cottage bakery. She produces an average of 280 individual products per week and advertises market days and locations on Instagram.

She has accumulated several regular customers at the markets, she says. And many of her colleagues from her synchronized swimming days still show up on bread day.

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