L.A. RISES UP
The goods are great at these 10 local bakeries you should know. See who’s making boules, ciabatta, croissants, kouign-amann, cookies and more.
BY AMY SCATTERGOOD The bread scene in Los Angeles, unlike in the bakery towns of San Francisco and Paris, tends to be inconstant, to go in waves — or rises, if you will. If the first rise was centered in Culver City’s Helms Bakery, whose bread trucks ran from 1931 to the late ’60s, then the second was Nancy Silverton’s La Brea Bakery, which opened in 1989 next to the late restaurant Campanile and which Silverton sold in 2001. The current rise is more of a patchwork of decidedly smaller bakeries and restaurants, many of which have lately been experimenting with locally grown and milled grain, even milling their own f lour on site. And another big rise may be on the horizon, with baker Chad Robertson’s hugely ambitious new Tartine Manufactory set to open downtown sometime later this year. While those engines and deck ovens fire up, here’s a list of L.A. bakeries for when the need for a crisp baguette, a whole grain boule, a flaky croissant or a French canelé or Jerusalem bagel hits.
Bread Lounge
Open since 2012 in an Arts District loft space that’s conveniently around the corner from Bestia, Ran Zimon’s bakery makes some of the best baguettes in town — which is the reason why they supply a number of restaurants and cafes in L.A. Zimon, who is from Israel (he makes fantastic Jerusalem bagels, likely the only baker in town who does), baked for Suzanne Goin before opening his own business. You can get sandwiches and pastries at his bakery, as well as borek, panini, salads and soups, but you’re here for the outstanding breads. While you’re there, check out the open bakery, as it’s fun to watch the bakers operate the German MIWE deck oven.
Breads: Baguettes, light rye, fig and walnut, wheat and walnut, country white, multigrain and potato-rosemary loaves, among others.
Pastries: Croissants, chocolate rugelach, kouign-amann, Danishes, cinnamon rolls, pain au chocolat, pain au raisin, bagels.
Coffee: Stumptown coffee on a Simonelli espresso machine.
Where: 700 S. Santa Fe Ave., Los Angeles, (213) 327-0782, breadlounge.com
Bub and Grandma’s
Andy Kadin, a former television writer, started baking bread at home, every day, until he finally quit his day job and started selling that bread to restaurants. Now he and his 10-person crew have a production kitchen just east of downtown L.A. and are “feverishly looking” for a retail space. Until then, Bub and Grandma’s — Kadin named his bakery after his two grandmothers — has set up a stand at the Sunday Hollywood farmers market where you can get their outstanding baguettes, boules, loaves and flatbreads (recently one topped with cauliflower, and another with mushrooms, garlic, onions and Calabrian chiles). Their bread is made from flour milled at Grist & Toll’s in Pasadena and natural levain, and it’s some of the very best in town.
Breads: Baguettes made with hard red, hard white, bread and spelt flours, and loaves and boules including a 30% rye, speltpolenta, fruit and nut, sesame, whole wheat, ciabatta.
Pastries: Nope.
Coffee: Nope, but you’re at the farmers market; there’s also a Groundwork nearby.
Where: Sunday Hollywood farmers market, 1600 Ivar Ave., Hollywood, and a few other retail shops, www.bubandgrandmas.com
Clark Street Bread
Zack Hall started baking his remarkable breads out of a 900square-foot West Hollywood apartment, selling them to local chefs and restaurants and getting press mainly via Instagram. He set up a stall at downtown’s Grand Central Market in late 2014, to which he recently added a counter and a breakfast, lunch and toast menu. And in June, Hall is again expanding, opening a 3,000-square-foot production and retail space in Echo Park, adjacent to where the late, lamented Haitian restaurant Ti Georges’ Chicken used to be.
Breads: Excellent country boules and baguettes, Alpine loaves, whole wheat, Danish rye, raisin walnut, ciabatta.
Pastries: Croissants and pain au chocolat (both fantastic), also brioche, pain au raisin, ham and cheese croissants.
Coffee: No, though the Echo Park space will have espresso. (G&B is on the Hill Street side of the market.)
Where: Grand Central Market, 317 S. Broadway, Los Angeles, www.clarkstreetbakery.com
Gjusta
Opened in October 2014, Gjusta is the bakery, deli and casual-food-on-the-patio spot from chef Travis Lett and the folks who brought you Gjelina. The first thing you see when you walk in the doors, other than the permanent crowd, are the stacks of flour from Central Milling that look like they were installed by the Army Corps of Engineers for some weather emergency. Cases in a long row are filled with pastries, the shelves with bread from the open kitchen and bakery. The baked goods are outstanding, and also include bialys and bagels, which are a pretty good reason to get as much of the terrific smoked fish as you can manage.
Breads: Excellent baguettes (plain, also sometimes buckwheat and black olive), pumpernickel, Pullman multigrain, seeded rye sourdough, whole grain miche, and a lot more — Gjusta has one of the very best and most diverse selections of bread in town. And if you’re there early, see if they still have babkas, which sell out every morning for very good reason.
Pastries: Croissants, cakes, scones, biscuits, brownies, Danishes, pain au chocolat, carrot cake and seasonally-specific fruit galettes.
Coffee: The coffee is from Sightglass Coffee, a San Francisco roastery, and espresso drinks are pulled from a La Marzocco.
Where: 320 Sunset Ave., Venice, (310) 314-0320, www.gjusta.com
Lodge Bread
Lodge’s baker-owners Alexander Phaneuf and Or Amsalam have been having a good 2017. First they made the semifinalist round for this year’s James Beard Award for Outstanding Baker, then in March they reopened their Culver City bakery, which they’ve expanded to include a Rosito Bisani wood-burning pizza oven and a beer and wine menu. The larger space gives them more room to bake the remarkable loaves of whole-grain, long-fermented, high-hydration bread that they bake very dark, in the old European tradition. Yeah, they make a fantastic plate of avocado toast, some pretty great pizza and have a menu that now includes soup, breakfasts and other dishes, but you’re here for the incredible loaves of bread.
Bread: Hard red country, seeded country, whole grain, ancient grain, seeded rye. (No baguettes, sorry.)
Pastries: Cookies, cakes and giant sourdough, whole grain cinnamon rolls the size of tea saucers.
Coffee: Graceland and Big City, on an Elektra machine.
Where: 11918 Washington Blvd., Los Angeles, (424) 384-5097, www.lodgebread.com
Milo & Olive
All the baking for the restaurants from the husband-and-wife team of Josh Loeb and baker Zoe Nathan (including Rustic Canyon and Huckleberry) is done at Milo & Olive, a homey, pizza-driven restaurant. So you can see the ovens in the open kitchen, the fires of the pizza oven — the breads on the shelves and the pastries in the case when you first walk in. This is terrific stuff: perfectly formed baguettes, gorgeous little cakes and pastries and wonderful whole grain sourdough loaves. Nathan, an alum of Tartine in San Francisco, also has a baking book, “Huckleberry,” named after her Brentwood bakery, so if you can’t get over to Milo & Olive, you could always try baking something yourself.
Breads: Baguettes, country boules, multigrain boules, brioche, ciabatta, sunflower and rye loaves. Also: bagels!
Pastries: Croissants, chocolate croissants, ham and cheese croissants, sticky buns, cookies, crostatas, quiche and pretty amazing foot-long cheese sticks.
Coffee: Caffe Luxxe, the L.A. based small batch roaster, on a 2-pull La Marzocco.
Where: 2723 Wilshire Blvd., Santa Monica, (310) 453-6776, www .miloandolive.com
Proof
Na Young Ma, a native of Glendale and graduate of the Culinary Institute of America’s pastry program, opened Proof in a tiny space in Atwater Village in 2010. Since then, the little shop has been perpetually crowded for good reason: Ma makes the best croissants in town, as well as a spectacular chocolate layer cake. Proof ’s menu is highly changeable, dependent on market produce, seasonal variations and just what the bakers can produce in their tiny kitchen. In addition to the baked goods, there are sandwiches and salads, cheesecakes and granola.
Breads: No breads for sale, though Proof makes excellent ficelle and baguettes for their sandwiches.
Pastries: Croissants, financiers, pain au chocolat, short bread, almond croissants, scones, excellent chocolate chip cookies, as well as whole cakes and slices, quiche, cheesecake and tarts.
Coffee: Portland, Ore.-based Heart and San Francisco-based Four Barrel coffee on a La Marzocco.
Where: 3156 Glendale Blvd., Atwater Village, (323) 664-8633, proofbakery.com
République
There is a certain irony to the pastry cases and shelves loaded with bread that greet you when you walk through the doors of République, chefs Walter and Margarita Manzke’s French bistro. This is because the cases and shelves are almost exactly as they were when the same space was Nancy Silverton’s old La Brea Bakery; République is what went into the old Campanile restaurant space, back in 2014. Fittingly, Margarita’s breads and pastries are as excellent as Silverton’s were. In addition to the loaves of breads, and many changing pastries, there is cake, specifically a fantastic chocolate layer cake. And when you walk into the restaurant, there is also a breakfast, lunch and dinner menu, where you can get Walter’s take on bistro food.
Breads: Baguettes (excellent), multigrain boules, organic sourdough boules, fruit and nut breads.
Pastries: Kouign-amann (fantastic) in both plain and fruit versions, croissants, brioche, canelés, crostatas, doughnuts, muffins, scones, cookies, eclairs, bombolini, cream puffs, Paris-Brests, alfajores, hand pies.
Coffee: Verve coffee on a La Marzocco.
Where: 624 S. La Brea Ave., Los Angeles, (310) 362-6115, republiquela.com
Rose Café
When chef Jason Neroni and his partners rebooted this longtime Venice neighborhood restaurant in 2015, they not only upgraded and expanded the space to showcase Neroni’s market-driven cooking, but they also added an impressive daily-changing bread and pastry program. The ovens in the open kitchen turn out baguettes and boules, and the cases in the front are loaded with an impressive patisserie collection. There’s also a huge outdoor patio where you can not only eat your mortadella panini but the full breakfast, lunch and dinner menu (the restaurant has charcuterie and pasta programs, as well as a pizza oven and a huge bar).
Breads: Baguettes (which are terrific), polenta sourdough, country white, banana bread.
Pastries: Kouign-amann, beignets, bagels, doughnuts, cookies, croissants, pain au chocolat.
Coffee: Espresso and tea drinks, including yerba mate, matcha and kombucha. Both the coffee and the espresso machine are from Verve.
Where: 220 Rose Ave., Venice, (310) 399-0711, rosecafevenice.com
Seed Bakery
Baker Joseph Abrakjian opened Seed in late 2015, making whole grain loaves and other baked goods in a cozy bakery and retail space arranged around an enormous Bongard four-deck oven. Abrakjian, who brought his breads to local farmers markets before he opened his bakery, grinds his own flour — there are sacks of grain stacked along the walls of the bakery — in a room near the kitchen, and the freshness of the flour translates into the loaves, built with spelt, rye, kamut and other whole grains. The pastries are also made with the whole grain flour as well as produce from local farms and markets.
Breads: Baguettes, kamut boules, rye and cranberry bread, rustic country loaves, ciabatta, brioche, whole wheat walnut, 100% spelt boules.
Pastries: Plain and chocolate croissants, muffins, scones, fruit Danishes and excellent vegetable and whole-grain crust quiches.
Coffee: Espresso and drink coffee from Kickapoo Coffee, a smallbatch Wisconsin-based company.
Where: 942 E. Washington Blvd., Pasadena, (626) 486-2115, www.seedbakerypasadena.com
amy.scattergood@latimes.com Instagram: @ascattergood