Small bakery.
Whole heart.
We opened with a domestic oven and a folding table. Six years later, the oven is bigger. The idea is the same.
Make something good.
Know what goes into it.
The first winter
We sold out by half past ten every day and thought it meant we were doing well. It did not. It meant we were baking about a third of what the street actually wanted, and sending people away hungry is not a business model, it is just a shortage with good manners.
So we bought a proper deck oven, second hand, from a bakery two towns over that was closing. It came through the back door in pieces.
A shortage with good manners.
The part you can’t
put on a timer.
Dough has its own clock. Try the baker’s fingertip test: press, watch, and decide when you would bake.
Trust your
fingertips.
Press a sample. Notice how the dent returns, then tell me what you think.
Now you’re reading the dough.
Same ingredients. Three very different moments. That’s the attention that goes into every loaf.
Follow a loaf from hereKeep Marisa’s notes beside you
01 · Too earlyA little patience.Read the dough
Still tight, with very little give. It springs straight back under a fingertip. Leave it a little longer; the oven cannot do the waiting for us.
02 · Just rightSmooth. And alive.Read the dough
A gentle press leaves a dent that slowly returns. There is air inside, and enough strength to hold it. This is the moment we are waiting for.
03 · Too lateTiming is a feeling.Read the dough
Slack, spreading, with a dent that stays. The dough has used its strength. A lesson in paying attention, even when the coffee queue is long.
After six years, we still check with a fingertip.
What has not changed
Everything is made on the premises, and everything is sold the day it is made. There is no second location, no wholesale, and nothing arrives frozen on a pallet.
That is a limit as much as a principle. It caps how much we can sell and it means Fridays are bread days rather than every day. We would rather be small and know what is in everything.
A limit as much as a principle.
What has
We do catering now, which we did not for the first three years, because a workshop down the road asked and we said yes before thinking about it. It went well enough that we kept doing it.
We also stopped opening on Mondays. Six days of a half past four start is sustainable. Seven is not, and the quality showed it before we admitted it.
The quality showed it before we admitted it.