All posts tagged: bakeries

‘Morning Baker’ celebrates pastry chefs who opened L.A. bakeries

‘Morning Baker’ celebrates pastry chefs who opened L.A. bakeries

Published by Sam Flores

The sky is still a dark indigo-purple at 5 a.m. over this eastern stretch of Hollywood Boulevard, where Thai Town and Little Armenia overlap. Located directly across the street from Jumbo’s Clown Room, neighborhood bakery-cafe Friends & Family looks blue-hour quiet. But the morning crew is nearly two hours into the week’s biggest “bake.” That means preparing a thousand baked goods of nearly 50 varieties, most of which will fill the pastry case by the time the doors open at 8 o’clock. Co-owner and baker Roxana Jullapat — who has just published her second cookbook, “Morning Baker: Recipes and Rituals for Breakfast and Beyond” — watches over a rotating oven that holds two nearly six-foot racks of 30 sheet trays filled with croissants. She left behind a career as a fine-dining pastry chef to open Friends & Family nine years ago with her partner, Dan Mattern, and helped lead a whole-grain baking revolution. Croissants fill the bakery case at Friends & Family, which baker and co-owner Roxana Jullapat opened with her partner nine years ago. …

‘Not quite Greggs’: TikTok creators put London’s ‘gentrified’ bakeries to the test | Gentrification

‘Not quite Greggs’: TikTok creators put London’s ‘gentrified’ bakeries to the test | Gentrification

Published by Sam Flores

The video that started it all was innocuous enough: a woman in her 20s posted on TikTok about how she spends a perfect weekend in north London. On her list were the bakeries Jolene and Gail’s, and the De Beauvoir Deli. The reaction, however, was anything but. Many locals commented that they had never heard of the businesses she mentioned. One north Londoner, Moses Combe, 21, was equally incredulous. “If this is where all the north London girlies come in the morning, I’d be a bit surprised,” he said in a viral video. Combe dubbed his reviews the ‘Endz Department for Research’. Photograph: tiktok/m.combe07 He set out on a mission to visit the establishments and see for himself what the fuss was about, heading into Jolene and buying a hot chocolate, sausage roll and his very first tiramisu cake, which he described as “bloody lovely”. So began a series of videos that the young Londoner has named the “Endz Department for Research”, in which he reviews upmarket cafés that he wouldn’t otherwise visit in his …

New Pasadena bakeries for pastries and gluten-free and vegan desserts

New Pasadena bakeries for pastries and gluten-free and vegan desserts

Published by Sam Flores

I’m going to introduce you to your new favorite chocolate chip cookie. It’s a sizable bronze round with big boulders of semisweet chocolate buried into the surface. The center is soft and chewy, with a lavish brown butter flavor that carries notes of toffee. It’s surrounded in a halo of crisp, golden cookie and finished with a sprinkling of salt. The cookie can go toe to toe with the one you make at home, and whatever other cookie you love around town. “We had a cookie, but it didn’t work because it was too gluten-free tasting,” says owner Leah Di Bernardo. “I tasked Helen Cho, our lead baker, with using brown butter to make the cookie, and she did.” Di Bernardo and her daughter, Gigi, run the Pasadena bakery, where the cookie, and everything else at the restaurant, is gluten-free. In the bakery case, you’ll find tender, cheesy biscuits made with almond flour, decadent doughnuts topped with passion fruit, mini Basque cheesecakes with almond and coconut flour crust and wedges of vegetable frittata. Di Bernardo …

Best Los Angeles bakeries for creative, viral croissants

Best Los Angeles bakeries for creative, viral croissants

Published by Sam Flores

Angelenos love croissants. In recent years the obsession has reached a fever pitch, thanks to new bakeries that have followed in the footsteps of lauded croissant-makers like Proof Bakery and the erstwhile Konbi. Trendy croissant hybrids have also helped fuel the pastry’s resurgence, including the Cronut, Cruffin and Crookie, as well as viral shapes like cubes and spirals. And while the classic French version has frequently been at the center of L.A.’s croissant craze, in 2025 local bakers are turning to global flavors — reinterpreting the flaky, buttery icon through the lens of their own heritage and childhood memories. Pastry chef Sharon Wang, owner of Sugarbloom Bakery in Glassell Park, purposely sought to challenge her classic European training when creating her signature kimchi Spam musubi croissant. “The idea came from the diversity of L.A. and also a rebellion against working for an organization that favors only European ingredients,” she says. In Victor Heights, Bakers Bench chef-owner Jennifer Yee uses the croissant to reinterpret a beloved generational recipe. “The egg roll croissant is something I’m really …

10 best Black-owned dessert spots and bakeries in Los Angeles

10 best Black-owned dessert spots and bakeries in Los Angeles

Published by Sam Flores

“I just need a little something sweet.” It was a predictable post-dinner refrain growing up, stated matter-of-factly by my mother, Southern grandmother or aunts, as though they were prescribing themselves dessert. The assertion was made regardless of the meal we’d just eaten, whether it was a simple weeknight dinner or a generous spread at a holiday gathering. The necessity of dessert — nothing too heavy, just a taste of something sweet — never waned. Now I find myself doing the same thing, searching for the ideal treat that will perfectly round out my meal. In those moments, I gravitate to the classic Southern desserts I was raised on: cinnamon-swirled Sock-It-To-Me cake, crumbly 7-Up poundcake with a delicate lemon-lime glaze, peach cobbler and sweet potato pie with flaky, buttery crusts that prove just as delicious as the filling. Thankfully, Los Angeles has plenty of Black-owned dessert shops ready to curb my craving. On South Central Avenue, a landmark bakery now in its third generation of family ownership represents the largest manufacturer of sweet potato pie on …

Best Armenian bakeries in L.A. for traditional pastries and bread

Best Armenian bakeries in L.A. for traditional pastries and bread

Published by Sam Flores

In fall 2022, an ancient bakery estimated to be roughly 3,000 years old was unearthed in Metsamor, Armenia. The remains of 3.5 tons of wheat flour and several furnaces were found, leading archaeologists to believe that it once served as a mass production site. The discovery highlights the historic and sacred role that baking and bread represent in Armenia. In 2014, Armenia’s lavash was recognized as an intangible cultural heritage by UNESCO. As Armenians migrated to and resettled in different parts of the world, traditions around pastry and bread making were preserved through family recipes, alongside bakeries that served as beloved touchstones for their newfound communities. The first Armenian bakeries in Los Angeles were founded in the 1980s when Armenians from Lebanon fled civil war. They opened businesses in North Hollywood and Glendale, specializing in lahmajoon, spicy cheese beureks, mantee and baklavas to continue the legacy their forefathers began centuries ago. Kristel Arabian, chef and founder of Kitchen Culture Recruiting Agency, whose family was among those immigrants from Lebanon, recalls how tiny shops grew to …