At any given moment, about 15 bakers, cooks, and assistants move about as if in a beautifully choreographed dance, creating up to 750 loaves of bread each day—not counting the Danishes, brioches, and made-to-order sandwiches. There’s no wall separating the customers from the creators, only a counter and shelves brimming with baked goods on tantalizing display.
“Sure, I wanted to be completely transparent about the production,” says founder Amanda Michael. “But I also wanted the staff to see the customers. I tell my employees to look up and see how their work is making people happy.”
Sporting youthful white-and-gold sneakers, soft-spoken Amanda doesn’t exactly cut an imposing figure. She took a roundabout route to the baking world, first working as a computer magazine editor in the early 1990s, long before tech was cool or all that lucrative. Bored in her cubicle, she daydreamed about how much fun she used to have working in restaurant kitchens while earning a degree in English at the University of California, Berkeley.
“So I bamboozled my way as an assistant at the Ritz-Carlton’s pastry department,” she says with a laugh. After a year and a half of the makeshift apprenticeship at the luxury hotel, she went on to bake at Lake Tahoe restaurants and teach at a cooking school. Eight years ago, when she decided to return to work after raising her daughter, after whom her bakeries are named, she took a chance on an empty storefront on the busy thoroughfare of Fillmore Street, where jazz clubs and Thai restaurants rub shoulders with chain clothing stores.
