Check out the article on something Proforma is building, an Artisan Bakery in Oakland!
Via SF Gate.
For seven years, Firebrand Bakery has been a bit of a hidden gem within the Bay Area’s artisan bakery world. Operating out of a small West Oakland production facility, baker-owner Matt Kreutz has amassed an impressive client list for his wood-fired oven-baked breads that includes the likes of Michael Mina, SPQR, Whole Foods, and The Ritz Carlton—even as he’s avoided the name recognition of such contemporaries as Acme, Semifreddi, and Tartine.
That could be changing, as Kreutz and his partner Colleen Orlando are set to move into a high-profile new production and retail location within the Hive complex in Uptown Oakland.
It’s a big move—the space is nearly four times as large as their current facility—but one the couple says is long overdue.
“We’ve outgrown our space; the demand has just totally skyrocketed,” says Kreutz. “We thought we were at capacity three years ago and we’ve just kept pushing it to the limit.”
Located at 2343 Broadway in the same Hive development from Signature Properties that will house the upcoming Drake’s pizza-beer garden and Chris Pastena’s Mexican project, Calavera, the spacious new locale affords the ambitious Kreutz the opportunity to expand his bread offerings—his emphasis is modernized takes on traditional old-world European styles, often molded into unique shapes not seen elsewhere in the Bay Area.
In addition, it will be Firebrand’s first retail shop, where customers can buy bread, as well as other offerings that will include a brand-new line of pastries that Orlando is developing from scratch. They’ll also have lunch offerings, such as soups, salads, and sandwiches (more details on that in the months to come), plus Highwire Coffee.
“We want it to feel like a really old-school, full-scale bakery, where you can get bread, you can get pastries, you can get a sandwich; there won’t be a limited line of anything.”
Currently, the plan is to move into the new Broadway space by Labor Day weekend. They’ll take about a month to ramp up production with the goal of launching the front retail section to the public by the first week of October. In particular, the couple is looking forward to connecting those two sides of the business, and plan to make the production end—occupying the back two-thirds of the interior—as open to the public as possible.
“A huge part of customer experience is having a connection with who’s making your food,” says Orlando. “And a baker’s life is kind of a secret one—you’re usually working at night, squirreled away somewhere. So what we really wanted to do was pull away the curtain, take down the wall, so you can come in to see what we do every day.”
And what they do, literally every day, is obsess about handcrafted bread and pastries. Kreutz has been working with Oakland’s Community Grains to source more specialty and locally grown flours and grains. He’s excited to dig even deeper into his craft, he says, and to explore different techniques—sprouting, mashes, soaking—in order to “utilize each grain to its fullest potential.” Orlando, meanwhile, is doing the same on the pastry end, including experimenting with hand-pulled strudel that she’ll debut at the retail shop.
“We’re just obsessed people,” laughs Orlando. “Currently at my home there’s probably like 10 to 12 pastry books on my bedroom floor. I’ll do a little reading before I go to bed and then Matt will come home and ask me my opinion on something [about bread]. I mean we talk about it all the time.”
Adds Kreutz, “It’s a unique lifestyle. It doesn’t fit everyone, but for us, it’s perfect.”