About five years before the pandemic, when the rest of America was seemingly in their “sourdough era,” two Los Angeles chefs had nailed the art baking naturally leavened bread.
At least, in a carport.
Or Amsalam and then-business partner Alexander Phaneuf were both chefs, having met while working at a fine dining restaurant in the city.
The two found they had similar goals. They didn’t love the idea of working in fine dining. They found the concept of a bakery appealing. They both loved bread. Good bread.
“So I said to [Alex], ‘If you quit, we’ll do it. We’ll give it a shot,’” said Amsalam. “The next day, he shows up at my doorstep, and he was like, ‘I quit.’ I was like, ‘How did you even know where I lived?’”
And so they began to bake, first in their home ovens, meeting to deliver the bread initially to restaurants, at least until Amsalam’s wife brought an end to the home baking operation.
Then, in 2015, the two converted Phaneuf’s carport into a bakery, running an exposed gas line down the driveway. “It was super illegal,” said Amsalam.
That lasted about a year before the two moved the bakery to a tiny 900-square-foot outlet in Culver City. And that’s where Lodge Bakery Company was (more officially) born, offering whole loaves, cookies, giant cinnamon rolls and some toasts to consumers, rather than wholesale.
The two chefs worked all hours in those early years to keep up with demand. Even when Lodge was nominated for a James Beard Award, they didn’t really have time to stop.
“It was nice to be acknowledged,” said Amsalam.
Bread is hard. Real naturally leavened sourdough is even harder, especially laminated pastries, like croissants. Most bakeries won't bother with starters and slow fermenting, Amsalam said. He wasn’t willing to take shortcuts.
An assortment of pastries, including the giant cinnamon roll. | Photo by Lisa Jennings
So it has taken some time—actually almost a decade—for Lodge Bread Co. to get to the point where it can scale while maintaining the quality the bakery café concept has become known for.
That quality, however, helped Lodge win an investor that is opening new doors for the brand.
During the pandemic, when Amsalam said the company hit “the lowest low,” Lodge began talking to a firm designed to help find investors, but it wasn’t a good fit, he said. “We were probably too small.”
There was even a point when the global chain Paris Baguette flirted with acquiring Lodge, Amsalam said, even flying them to South Korea to visit the operations there. Also not the right fit, he said.
So Amsalam decided to go direct to customers, sending an email saying they were looking for investors in the brand.
And one of those customers, who also has invested in some of Los Angeles’ top restaurants through Sprout LA, responded.
Michael Glick is the founder of distributor Vesta Foodservice but also Sprout LA, which has backed acclaimed restaurants like Bestia, Republique and others.
“He reached out and said, ‘Let’s make something happen,’” said Amsalam.
Now with three locations, Lodge last week opened a new commissary adding about 1,800-square feet to the original 900-square-foot cafe. There’s indoor and outdoor seating, but, most importantly, there’s room to make a lot more bread, and a dedicated pastry room for the treats like the giant cinnamon rolls.
Units in Beverly Hills and Woodland Hills are elegant and bright—a far cry from the carport kitchen.
Next year, a fourth location is scheduled to open in Pasadena. That location will be the Lodge bakery-café during the day, and at night it will light up as Full Proof Pizza, featuring sourdough-crust pizza.
The Pasadena location was already in the works when Los Angeles was ravaged by wildfires, particularly in neighboring Altadena. Needless to say, it delayed the opening.
“We were nervous because a lot of our client base, that whole neighborhood, was decimated,” said Arthur Sherman, Lodge’s president, who joined the company in 2022. “But we’re a neighborhood restaurant. We wanted to be part of the rebuild, and be there for the community.”
In addition, there are more concepts coming.
Amsalam is also hoping to revive an Israeli-inspired hummusiya spot called Hasiba that opened briefly before the pandemic, but didn’t survive the restaurant shutdown. They are looking for a location.
The three brands operate under Alchemy Restaurant Group.
For Lodge Bread, there are no plans to franchise, though Amsalam said, “Never say never.”
He describes himself as “very growth minded.”
“For me, I would like to scale this in a way that maintains quality and allows us to bring it to people all over America, if possible,” he said.
That growth ambition, however, was not shared by Phaneuf, who exited the partnership.
“He wanted the one location,” said Amsalam. “It just wasn’t aligned with where the company was going.”
The U.S. is enjoying somewhat of a bakery boom this year, which Amsalam attributes to all the bread baking done during the pandemic. People realized how good properly made sourdough can be.
And at a time when consumers are cutting back on more upscale dining, bakery cafes offer an opportunity for more affordable indulgence, said Sherman.
“If people are going to cut something out, they’re going to cut out a more expensive dinner, but they’ll indulge on a good breakfast or a quality sandwich,” he said.
Still, Lodge sandwiches, which are well-stuffed, range in price from about $15 to $22.
Amsalam said Lodge has struggled to keep prices down, even as food costs have skyrocketed. When Lodge first started baking, flour was a little more than $20 per bag. Now it’s upwards of $45 to $55, he said.
That means menu items like the cinnamon roll, which was priced at $6 a decade ago, is now close to $13. (That roll, however, could generously serve two to four.)
Sherman said their goal is to focus on being that asset to a neighborhood, that gathering spot where people can meet for a coffee and croissant, a chopped salad or sandwich piled high with pastrami.
“We know we’re not going to try to be everything for everybody,” he said. “We have a lane. We’re a café and bakery. We are breakfast and lunch,” he said. “We know what we need to be and it’s a function of just finding some neighborhoods that don’t have this, and we think we could be a value add.”