Breaking Bread with Tom Papa - Episode 53 - Lodge Bread

Episode Date: May 11, 2021

Bread meet bread! Today I sit down with the co-founders of Lodge Bread, Or Amsalam and Alexander Phaneuf.  They are two amazing bakers who have all of LA raving about their bread and with good reason!   Today's podcast is brought to you by Helix Sleep - Go to Helixsleep.com/PAPA, take their two minute sleep quiz and find your perfect mattress. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

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Hey, it's our goal. Hey, it's time for Breaking Bread with Papa. Hey, don't you know? Hey, it's also a show. Hey! Hey, everybody, welcome to another edition of Breaking Bread with Tom Papa. I am Tom Papa. Thank you so much for being here on another culinary and comedy sit down thingamaroo.

I don't really know what to call it. It's a good time. tell you that. Today we have a great show. We've got the two co-owners of Lodge Bread who have become pals of mine. I had them on the Food Network show, baked. It's where I first met them. I started off as a fan. It's pretty great, I have to say, that I am literally a fan of bakers. I truly, truly am. The bread they make, it's amazing. And I can't, I really can't get close. I do a good job on my own. People enjoy what I make.

But their bread is killer. And I'm going to start the podcast off here at home. And then we're going to boogie over to the studio and spend some time with these two fine, fine bakers and really cool people. I can't wait for you to meet them. Make your life better. Okay, so these two fine, fine men or Amsterdam and Aleksandah, They are two friends that started out their culinary journey working together in a restaurant and food service and doing their thing.

And they both had this love for making bread, sourdough, whole grain sourdows. And I'll let them tell the story. But it is a very similar story when you talk to people that start making these whole grain sourdows. the old fashioned way, let's say, the traditional way. And myself included, there's an addictive element to baking bread this way. It is something about it is so natural and so right and so delicious that you start to become somewhat addicted to the process and the product. And I started banging around online and saw.

who are the great bakers in Los Angeles? And Lodge bread kept coming up again and again. And I went and visited their shop. And man, oh man, their bread is so great. And when you sit and talk to them, as you do with a lot of these great bakers, there's just this calm about them. There's just this positive energy

that they know without a doubt, without any question, that they are doing something really good. And it just becomes natural extension of who they are. And that's what these shops are. Lodgebread,

you got to go check them out. If you're not in the area, look them up online. If you are anywhere near it, just go on social media, look up Lodgebread, and go visit them. They have a couple retail shops.

They're always expanding. They're always coming up with different stuff. There's a pizza night. rumors about that in the works. But I, look, when I, during the pandemic, I was baking bread and delivering it to my comedian friends and just like as a way to say hello, as a way to drive over, you know, to Roy Scovel's house and drop off some bread and spend some time with him and his wife.

And it was a nice way to connect. And they're always very complimentary about the bread. But there was also a recurring question that kept coming up. as I would travel around LA and deliver bread, they would say, this is really great. Have you ever tried lodge bread? Do you know lodge bread?

Have you had lodge bread? I brought bread over to Whitney Cummings, and she said, this is amazing. Look it over here on the counter. Oh, what's that? Oh, it's lodge bread. So a little humbling, because these guys are so dialed in.

They're educated and, practiced and I can't wait for you to hear their humble beginnings. They are like the beginning of the story of when you think about baking this kind of stuff and getting good at it. And then it stops there for me. It's friends and family. But there's always a little bit that thinks, what would people, what would a bakery be like? What would it be like bringing this out into the world? And a lot of times you hear about bakeries and it's like, you know, they've been in the family for years. These guys just made it happen. And a lot of work, a lot of dedication, and a lot of talent. Let's be honest. They both know it. It's not like two

people who just want to open a bakery and what are we going to make. Let's bake bread. You know, it comes from the thing. It comes from these whole grain sourdows that they loved and were making and poured their life into it. And they both have been cranking along for years now. and they're gaining, you're going to hear more and more about them because they're growing. They have bigger designs of how to bring this bread to everybody else.

So I'm going to get in the car. I'm going to buzz over to the studio and I'm going to sit down with the two guys from Lodge Bread. I'm going to welcome them to the table. I am not dumb enough to bring them my bread. I would like to maybe on the side, show them and say,

what do you think? What would you do? But I'm no fool. I'm not bringing them my bread. I actually had a little idea in my head. I made some. I don't know what I was thinking. They came out kind of flat. I'm like, there's no way.

I wouldn't give this to my neighbor, let alone. Or Amsalam and Alexander Funu. Two great, great guys. It's a great conversation. You're going to love them. So let's get in the car. Let's go over. to the studio at all things comedy, hook up with my pal Aaron, and welcome Lodgebread.

Cheers, fellas. Cheers. Cheers. Thanks for coming. Wow. It's been a while. I know. It's been a long time. Yeah, I know. Mm-mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. Thanks for a bit. I, um, I got in real trouble. I had someone on and I was chewing. Oh, it was, um, Mikey Alfred, the director, Mikey Alfred. And, um, he brought donuts and they were just too insanely good. So we just started eating them. And the comments, it was like we had done like something like horrible to the audience. Of course. Please stop the chewing.

So it was like, all right, I'll bring McPellas some cheese and just some wine. We can drink wine. No one will get angry for that. We eat too much of the bakery. I'll have a big proper intro for you that'll be all shiny that will tell the people what you're doing. So we can. Shamelessly plug. We can just go into it.

Yeah, everything you've ever done. But I went with Northern California wine because you guys have a Northern California vibe. I mean, we did the Food Network show together. We got to spend one day together. And I was just a fan of your bread. And then we got to do the show. But I don't know if it was from your tattoos or your vibe.

I just got a grateful dead Northern California vibe from you, too. Am I accurate at all? I've only been in California like twice. We hate both of them. You've been there twice. Yeah, I mean, with Alex one terrible time to San Francisco and then one other time. What was wrong with it? What happened?

Long story short, we stayed up all night to bake for one of our mentors. And we were deliriously tired, and Alex ended up busting his head open on my car door. My forehead open. Yeah, his forehead. Right after we got there, and we just cut the whole. trip short. And we like went and slept for like two days. Yeah. And that was our trip. And then we just drove back. Can you say who was it? We were visiting Josie Baker. Oh, geez Louise. Yeah. You're all excited. No, we got to talk to him. We talked to him for like two hours. Yeah.

Yeah. And that was like 2014, I think. All right. So I apologize for the wine then because that is a wonderful story. No, it's all good. No, we're big fans. I mean, I think when we, when we, um, got to when we got married, uh, we did want to make a little cafe that did remind us of, of perhaps somewhere in the Bay Area or somewhere. I mean,

you know, I wouldn't say that was this whole inspiration, but I mean, we, we, we do love the Bay Area. Yeah, a chill vibe.

Yeah, a chill vibe was. And where did I get the Grateful Dead thing? Was it from your tattoo? It was probably playing non-oddy. Maybe it was from your hand tattoo. Well, playing nonstop. It was probably playing nonstop when you were there.

Right. Oh, maybe. Yeah. Yeah. And the shot. Right, right, right. All right. All right, so tell me, let's tell the people the story of when you met and when bread crept into the conversation.

Yeah, I told the story today. Did you? Yeah, so, I mean, it's like 2014, and we were both kind of like in between jobs. Burned out. They called out. Yeah, burnt out. And we were kind of cooking at this little gastropub in West Hollywood called Gold. oldies.

Right. And yeah, I mean, we just started, you know, making food together and chatting about what it is we wanted to do. And we started making the bread at the restaurant because I was also private chefing at the time and I was making bread for my dinners. Uh-huh. And so I brought in some bread and Alex was all about it. And so we started making bread for service.

Right. And you had gone on vacation. So he said, oh, well, I'm on vacation. Can you make the bread at the restaurant? Feed the starters. I said great, that'd be awesome. And how did it, if we can go back, how did that bread that you were making originally? Yeah.

How did that start? I just couldn't get bread that I liked. Uh-huh. And I just said, I'm going to do it. I'll just make it, yeah. And got your own starter going? Yeah. Yeah.

And, I mean, same thing at the restaurant. We just, we hated the bread that we were serving. Mm-hmm. Terrible. Yeah. Generic dry. Yeah, I don't think we had been working, chefing, you know, the past the decade before. that of chefing. It was part baked bread.

Right. Pretty standard issue for a restaurant. Nobody really cared. Yeah. With no disrespect to that. I mean, it works. Yeah. It works.

It's purpose-built. Right. But yeah, I mean, once we started baking bread in the restaurant, we started making menu items that were like bread-centric, like very focused on the bread, right? And then customers, yeah. And then customers started actually buying the loaves from us at the restaurant. Yeah.

We did, we like put some, like a beef tartar, tartine on the menu, a few things on the menu. And it was like my day off. And we had just put some new dishes on the menu with all the spread that we baked. And, or was slated to bake 10 loaves or something for that day. It was like a bit excessive, but we were probably going to eat five of them. And it was like later on in the night and I knew service was coming to an end. And then I hit him up. I said, how'd service go?

He goes, great. And it was actually unbelievable. I go, how'd that new tartine dish? shwork out. He goes, we couldn't get to it. People just came and bought all the bread from the restaurant. Wow. Right? Yeah, I mean, we didn't serve it. We made maybe like a couple, but we sold all the lows, yeah.

Amazing. Then I think that week was like when we were like, what are we doing? Why don't we just? Because I think I asked Alex, like, what he wanted to do in the future because my, I was already like, I wanted to go on to like the next thing. Right. Tired of cooking and, you know, other people's kitchens. Yeah. No offense to them.

Yeah. You'll grow it. Yeah. And he said he would, you know, want to open like a little cafe. I said, or a bakery. And I said, yeah, I'm down. If you're serious, like, I'll do it too. And I think he, like, the next day showed up on my doorstep with, like, a box of all his stuff.

And I was like, how the fuck did you find out where I live? No, we had hung out like a couple nights before just hashing it out. But, no, but seriously, he showed. up that morning and my doorstep like, I was just drunk. I didn't really mean this. And he had actually quit. And I was like, all right, I guess I got to quit too. And I quit that day as well. Wow. I put in my notice. And we, uh, what a good moment. What a ballsy moment. Yeah. What a nerve-wracking moment when you're just like, because it's not set up yet. You don't have the shop open yet. You think it's going to be different. It's like your,

it's like a first time for a lot of things, right? Right. In your head, you build it up. Yeah. Yeah. Oh, that one moment where I'm, especially in old, oh, when I'm finally open my own plate. People always ask you, right? Right. You know, especially chefing or cooking in the industry for a long time. I feel like, you know, after I'm like, when are you going to open your own place? When are you going in your head? You're like, oh, well, when some investor approaches me or when they asked me to open my dream restaurant or something, it was so far from that. It took us like a little over a year to actually get the space open. We were, I mean, we, Alex was living in like Culver

city and we had set up a pretty bootleg bakery in our friend Morgan's house where he was living he were living at the time and it was like it wasn't even in a garage it was in a carport so the carport was open to the elements uh-huh oh geez we ran a gas line uh-huh and a water line we put a three comp sink and an old oven that we bought um like a legit bread oven no like a convention It was like a 30-year-old convection oven that we bought, like, a Craigslist that was, like, from, like, some old restaurant in Beverly Hills that went out of business. And, um, and, um, and Morgan was like, I got an old, real old, like, Maytag refrigerator.

Oh, yeah. Like, like, an enameled, like, yellow refrigerator. Right, like from the 70s? Yeah. It was terrible. Um, but it worked. It worked. Yeah.

I mean, it went down a couple times. It barely worked. But we put a table out there and we started making bread and we had friends in the industry and so we started you know doing tastings for them and then started selling the bread and that went on for like eight months until we found almost a year yeah we found until we found our location uh-huh which was just like an old office space because it was all we could afford i mean we tried we tried working with some brokers that were just like you know thought we were like these millionaires that had like you know investors behind us and they kept showing

showing us spaces like in West Hollywood or like prime silver leg and like we're like we're like in an old office like we need something that's like two dollars a square foot right you're showing me like ten dollars a square foot like we need something that's less than a thousand square feet or it's going to cost us like you know eighteen hundred dollars to two thousand dollars a month and they're like well you're you're signed uh you're contracted with us for a year so we were screwed on that end. Oh, geez. But did you know at that point, like, we've got something that's really good?

Like, did you know that the bread was exceptional? We were selling to, like, 12 or 14 restaurants out of that. We kind of said, yeah, we kind of said, hey, if we can get a little biz established and it was paying for itself, then we're like, we'll keep doing it. Right. You know, obviously, like, we could just ditch the backyard eventually and just, and just, just, just put the backyard in an office. And even have the same clients, and we wouldn't starve to death per se.

We probably couldn't pay our rent, but we wouldn't starve to death. We thought we were only going to do wholesale when we first opened. So we, I mean, we were selling bread to these restaurants. Nobody knew where it was coming from. Everybody was curious. Like, all of our buddies were like, where are you guys baking all this bread from? Meanwhile, we're, like, driving to do deliveries with dough in our car, like folding dough in our car.

driving back home as soon as we can, shaping, baking first thing in the morning. It was a wild life. It was a wild year. I mean, I remember we used to send. That was last year. It must have been like, so that's when COVID hit. Exactly. It's all become one.

I mean, we even, we couldn't get the big trucks that delivered like flour and stuff to come down his street. Oh, no. So one purveyor of ours that, delivered like seeds and things like that to us, he would come and deliver it personally. We still work with him to this day. Wow. But other companies, we would have to send them to other restaurants and catch the truck. Oh, wow.

And so the truck would show up at the restaurant. We'd be in the parking lot and we'd like flag him down. Be like, hey, that's ours. And he's like, what? And people would come out and like, no, it's all good. It's our flower. We're like, we paid for it. That's hilarious.

We send one to A-frame and they're like, guys, you can't do this anymore. What's so crazy about that? I mean, it makes sense that you're folding stuff in the back of your car because the schedule is relentless. Like you can't skip. And if you're doing the delivery guy and also the order guy and the picking up and all the rest of it. Oh, yeah. It's like bread's unforgiving. Like you, it doesn't give you time.

Yeah, it can be crushing. Yeah. It doesn't make time for you. Yeah. It still doesn't. Yeah, I mean, it was definitely a 24-7 kind of thing. And, like, I remember we, I think we both took like a little bridge. before we open the retail shop.

And all the restaurants are like, what are we going to do? We're like, figure it out. Like, there's nothing we can do. We can't make you anymore. But, like, stock up and freeze it. Other than that, like, we're taking a period. We're taking a little break. Yeah, we had to take, like, a few days off to move into the space.

Eventually, we got a space built out. Yeah. Which is, was... I mean, we built it ourselves with a couple other... Really? It was just, like, a small version of the one that you visited. Okay. Like a little tiny.

It was 900 square feet. It was just... It was just a band cat, like a line of bank hats and... Life was easy. Yeah. And a bar where people could sit at. And it was like, I mean, we didn't expect to do much retail because it was in the middle of nowhere, really, when we first open. I mean, it was Calver City, but it was very west Culver City.

And it was slow when we opened. It was. I mean, it was relatively slow, but it picked up quickly. And we soon after shifted to focus more on retail and being a neighborhood bakery. Right. The wholesale was a wild, a wild game, and we don't really like doing it anymore. Right. So you scaled that back.

Oh, yeah. So did it, was it word of mouth? I mean, you're not like really. Yeah, I mean, to this day, everything is natural. I mean, at the moment we're starting to focus ourselves a little bit more on like generating some buzz about other concepts that we're working on and other things that we're doing. Yeah. But yeah, it's been all natural, which is great.

It really is a cool thing because, you know, as a. I noodle around and keep trying to get better at baking bread and I just share it with everybody because I make more than my family can eat. So I bring it to a lot of comics. And during the pandemic, it was like a weekly thing. It was like I made them for my family. And now I get to go see a comedian I'd normally see all week long at the comedy store. And now I just see them by delivering bread to them. And I started to hear, have you ever had lodge bread?

I love that. That's good. That's great. Have you ever had that bread? I was like, yeah, I know those guys. It was Whitney Cummings and Ali Wong and a couple other people. I was like, those guys are killer. Yeah, it's so great.

I mean, it's hard to believe that that's where we're at, like, five years later or six years later. Yeah, you're in there. A lot of comedians. I guess we are in Los Angeles, though. It's not a shocker, but we also don't really ever get out. We're like, what, you're a comedian? You're an actor? Right.

When it's like, you know, I don't know. Which is the best way, yeah. It's weird. Yeah. What was your, is your story way different? Or were you suddenly one day like, oh, I got to try this? When we met you, you were like, I'm bread obsessed already. Yeah, no.

There's something so addictive about it. When a friend taught me how to do it, it was a writer friend of mine. And I didn't know what starter was. I didn't know that that's how you made bread. And I was always trying to get healthy stuff for my family. and when I realized it was just flour, water, salt, and yeast, and I was giving my family this bread and, like, the best bread I could get at a supermarket was, like, 35 ingredients. Yeah.

I was like, oh, man, it was so good and that I just want to keep doing it. But it was also something about the process of it. Something about that process is so creepily addictive. Yeah. Like, you don't want to stop doing it. Like, you think about it. Like, you, I knew I was screwed when I was driving. to a gig through central

California and there was these rolling hills. You know when they all turn brown, like in the summer when there's no more water and they all turn brown and it's just like and I was like, that looks like my dough when right before shape, like they had the bubbles and had like the top. And I was like, I'm looking

at a beautiful mountain and I'm thinking about a pot of dough. I'm like, I'm sick. I'm obsessed. You imagine how many people are like that. Yeah. And even like, I mean, you know there's just such a large amount of people that have no Instagram, and it's not the popular thing, and they've been doing it their whole lives. I know. And it's probably way better bread than we make. And they're probably just as obsessed. When I put my first Dutch oven, it was an older guy who was selling

it to me, and he was, he's like, what are you going to do with this? I said, I'm going to, I'm starting to bake bread. He's like, oh, yeah, I've been baking for a long time. My starter is like 75 years old, and he started saying, I'm really getting into seed breads now. I'm really just, I mean, there's a lot of different things you can do with seed breads. And I was like, what a weirdo. Two months later, I'm like, I got so many seeds. Call him back. Yeah.

He's been on a podcast, yeah. But I don't have a real, I'm getting more consistent. Like, I'm trying to. I'm always just kind of like throw in and so are we. I'll try and do this stuff. But like your bread is, no, but there's like your main loaf, it's like, it always looks like has a good caramel coat, the crust, and it's like a little darker and it just has like. Well, we also have the luxury of the bread ovens that we use. I mean, yeah.

It's a little different than when you're baking at home. And when we were even baking out of the backyard, we struggled with a lot of things as well that, you know, professional bakeries just didn't. Right. Who were you trying to emulate when you were in the yard? Were the people... Just ourselves? Just yourselves? I mean, listen, we pull inspiration from a lot of people, right?

I mean, we... I mean, I think Josie was a huge mentor for us and inspiration for us. But that being said, I mean, we wanted to kind of be true to what we do. Because we're also chefs, right? And we have that part in us. Yeah. Right. That creativity and base of knowledge.

Yeah. I mean, just like our seeded love, for example, we threw Nigella seeds. And from, you know, just me, like the Middle Eastern background, there's a lot of breads that have night jealousies. And that never really was a thing here that often. I mean, you wouldn't find that a lot of places. Now you see it more. Right, right.

Yeah, we use a lot of whole grain. Yeah. Yeah, we just tried to do our thing. Right. And when you dial in a flower combination that works, do you kind of lock it in or is the flour? I know you also grind your... If the makers let us...

At this point, we don't have much say. What do you mean? I think you eventually make, I think it would be moderately the same unless we had, you know, unless we had a, one of our loaves, yeah, we don't really, a couple of our loaves we absolutely don't mess with. Yeah, right. Because they've been locked in. We did try to mess with them for years, even. I was going to say, once you find that flower combination, you usually screw it up.

You know, usually you're like, oh, I'm kind of bored. So, let's buy some different stuff. And then you just always mess with it. Yeah, a couple times. That did get dialed, but if we didn't almost purposely constantly change everything, we would have no reason to show up to work. Right. So we do, I mean, currently right now, I mean, I was slightly late because we're in the process

of forever changing a few loaves, and it's always a nightmare. I mean, you're never, it's just like, but I just wanted to tweak it a little bit. And it's a disaster. We changed a big thing recently, which was the environment in which we bake, so everything changed over. We brought our bait. When COVID hit, we, right before COVID, we opened our commissary, no, our commissary facility. Oh, okay. So we have a, you should get our central bakery, Englewood.

That used to be a Le Pen, Cotidienne bakery that we took over a few years ago. Like a big wholesale space. Yeah. So we, that's our hub that funnels product to all of our locations. and we were going to use that to ramp up and open more retail spots. And right before COVID hit, like maybe a week before the shutdown, I was, like, close to signing three leases on three different spaces. And for some reason, I think I just, like, delayed, like, we weren't, we were just like,

let's hold up and see what's going to happen. I think we changed a couple loaves that week, and we were desperately trying to wrestle some flowers. Probably, you know, something happened. Distracted you just enough. Yeah, yeah. And COVID hit, and we shut down our production in the commissary and brought everything back to the bakery because it was such a big, you know, financial draw for us to let us kind of recoup a little bit. And a couple months ago, we finally brought everyone back.

So we're kind of back on track and we're growing again. We're working on a long beach location. Wow. And a couple other things as well. So to circle back, what he's saying is things change all the time. Yeah. Though the changing of flowers or things or seeds may be different, but we have the environmental factor as big,

just as if you try to take all your loaves and then your little kit over to our place, you'd be like, why is it working? What's going on? So I think that... I mean, the mixers are bigger, the ovens are bigger, the room is colder. I think we're always trying to grow and adapt, and you do have that absolutely humbling factor that you brought up in the beginning,

which is like, we're bakers. that bread is always like, good try. It reminds me of when I tried to golf and I like got through it. Like the friend really wanted me to do it. And I was like, I had like this terrible swing, but I could golf. Like I could get through around with my friends. And then my wife bought me lessons from a guy who would tell me how to really golf. And I was like, okay.

And then we cracked it open the swing. And I was like, I don't know how to do this anymore. I've got like, it's almost easy. It's humbling. And it's right. And I was shit for like months. And it's the same thing with the bread. I'm like,

I'm going to try rye. Let me just try and venture off. And then I stink again for like a month. Yeah, it hurts. It hurts. I mean, we have issues as well. Like we have new employees, new bakers. Yeah.

The flowers are a little different sometimes. Like, there's things that affect consistency and we're not always right. And no one can be 100% consistent. So especially with this kind of product. Right. And it's like a constant. struggle. Yeah.

So we do our best to be consistent for our customers, but I mean, with this kind of product, there's definitely like some leeway and how consistent you can be, especially because it's like an artisan product you can't. Right. I think other customers, they understand that. I'm sure if they come in and they don't have something or whatever, it's like, that's kind of like the appeal of it, actually. Yeah, I mean, sometimes.

That's, yeah, I mean, that's some people's perspective. other people are pissed. For us, we're like, we messed up a whole mix. And then all of our retail managers, like, oh, we sold out of that loaf today. And for us, it's like, no, we didn't even sell one of those. We're just telling people we didn't. Yeah. Aren't we adorable?

Yeah. The mistakes we make. Yeah, it's, yeah. I feel like sometimes you can't think about it. Yeah. I mean, it is what it is. You just keep going. Yeah.

Mm-hmm. When I did that Food Network show, I went to, what is it? Right outside of Detroit, the largest Middle Eastern community, Dearborn, outside of the Middle East. Okay. Huge. The number of bakeries, amazing. Yeah. And the one was this Lebanese bakery with Zatar.

Yeah. And just taking out these flatbreads and just, oh, my God. I was like, this is kind of endless. It's kind of endless, like the different variations of the same base product. I mean, it's the same thing. It's bread. But what this guy was doing was just like mind-blowing. It's different.

And then you ask, and it's like, what do you mean? I just do that. Right, exactly. I know they're unimpressed. That's just my thing. You're like, okay, well, I'm trying to understand it. But we talk about that all the time. It's such a thing that, like, it's such a draw because you also just know that there's

so much out there. It's like for as addicting of a process, it might be. It's also kind of like also addicting to know that there's so much to learn or there's so much to find. It's kind of, you know, that kind of weird thing where you're like, even us, we've been on searches for one type of flatbread. And it's been like a virtual maze that we never find the end of. Really? What are you looking for exactly? Well, you know, like a certain.

What are you talking about the one that we had? That saloof we had. Yeah. So it's like a pan fried bread. It's not like a crispy flatbread, so it was something that more like a sponge. Well, you saw, you remember it was, so I took Alex to Israel before we opened Haseba. And so in the Yemenite corner in the Shuk in Tel Aviv, there was this restaurant that served a veggie salad.

It was it called Yomtov Cafe or something like something. And they served a salad that was just cut up market veggies on top of this saluf. bread, which is not like, it was, it's a pan fried bread. Like he puts the dough or the batter in a pan. Yeah. And so we ate in. We were just, it was so good because it soaked up all like the, in the trina and the lemon juice and olive oil.

Oh, boy. We asked, we asked the cafe, like, where do you guys get this bread from? They were like, what do you mean? Like, what do you mean where we get it from the baker? Like, where's the baker? Right. Like, we don't, why would we tell you where they were kind of weird? They were weird about us asking.

And so we explained, we explained. We explained why we were asking. They were asking if we were trying to copy their menu because I saw us looking at their menu. We're like, no, first of all. No, no. Even if we did call it, we're far, far away. Thanks.

We had a, they finally let, they finally. The city's not going to impinge on your business. Exactly. I mean, thank you. They finally told us where it was. And we ended up walking like 15 minutes away to the bakery. And it was just one, one guy in like, in like some random place an alley that was making a bunch of different types of bread.

and pastries and he kind of got weirded out when we were watching him because it doesn't really happen often. He let us in. Yeah, he started talking to us, and he showed us how he made the bread, and we still have yet to, you know,

make it right. Did you remember what he told you? No. No, well, he didn't tell us. He just showed us. He did. He was explaining as he was going, but he was going so fast,

because he's a one-man show, right? He makes bread for all the local eateries. He was telling us, I made. Yeah. Yeah, he was sent. saying he said, come in, he showed us around. And we said, we just had this exact bread.

Right. And he said, oh, you know, the whole thing was kind of like, okay, and what else? And then we'd be like, well, we just like want to know more about it. We're bait. We said, we're bakers. We want to know more about it. It's kind of great. Yeah, he's kind of like, oh, what?

Like, that's weird. But he eventually led us around it kind of like his little setup. Uh-huh. But the whole gist of his, you know, this bread's existence was him just saying, well, over there I mix it. And then in that bucket, I let it sit. And in those pans I fry it. The pans were like falling apart, like 30-year-old cans.

He had like a rotating pita oven. You remember in the middle of the room that was constantly used constantly making it? And we're looking at the pita oven and he's like, why are you looking at that? We're like, there's just stuff on. We're staring at it. But in the end, yeah, I mean, it was virtually, we virtually decoded nothing at all. You know, I mean, the trip was long. Like, we ate at so many different restaurants and we had so much different, like,

so many different foods and breads that we were just, it was. delirious. But he was just kind of like, yeah, I made bread. And we were like, okay, great. That's so brutal. Yeah. So, yeah, I mean, there's always like different cultures and different styles of bread. Yeah.

You know, it's never ending. Yeah, it is never ending. I mean, your list I was looking at your menu this morning. And it's such a cool, eclectic mix, like, of your standard breads. And then what do you call them, like your super duper special bread? Super special. Super mega ultra. Yeah.

That was, yeah. Yeah, the olive bread. That name, don't. from that argument that I had with that customer. What happened? What? Which one? The dollar, remember?

The infamous dollar argument. What was that? I don't. You don't remember that? I do. Come on. There's a lot you blocked it. It was a rough moment for me.

A customer was at the register and he was trying to buy a local. The place was like a shoebox so nobody could not. And I was probably like on like two hours of sleep, right? So I was not in my customer service mode like I normally am. And he was always. arguing with our cashier. And he was saying, I'm going to pay $10 for this loaf.

So the loaf changed. Every day, the loaf changed. And we made a special loaf that was with black pepper and pecorino. Loaf de jour. Whoa. And it was, we wanted to charge $11 for that loaf. Right. The loaf the day before, a few days ago, was $10.

Uh-huh. The price, the sign didn't change, said special loaf $10. And the guy's like, your sign says special loaf for $10. So I'm buying that loaf for $10. I was like, well, what is that? He's like, that loaf right there. I was like, that's a super special loaf. That's $11.

And at that point, Alex, like, pulled me away. He's like, just give it to him for $10. Sir, just please hand over a $10 bill and this whole thing will be over. He's walking in the parking lot. You got away with a super special loaf? Yeah. And I think he's like, I want to talk to him. Man, he's just like, I'm the owner.

That's a super special look. That's great. We've never down that. Do you find that more people, like whenever I go to places like that, like yours, you know that you know this is a small shop, this isn't a chain. You know they're from San Francisco. You know they're from San Francisco. I was born in San Francisco. And you just like, you tip bigger, you buy whatever, you buy extra.

Like there's that mentality of like you're doing something. something good because you're supporting good people. Is that the way most people treat your shop when they come in? It is? That's good. I would think so. That's good to hear. I was going to say yes and no. Like there's people that do and people that don't.

It's a pretty big mix, right? Like you get the people who are the regulars that know us, right? Because right now, I mean, the shops are, it's a little different. It's not the same 900 square foot bakery that it was when we started. You know, we have two locations. We have another restaurant and the commissary where we're, you know, at a lot of the time. So before we were there 24-7, now we might not be there all the time.

We still have staff members that were with us from the start. But our regulars are definitely supportive like that. And then there's, you know, the normal customers that are also great and supportive, but they're maybe don't know that we are like still a family-owned restaurant that think that lodge bread is like a big corporate chain or something. That's, you know. Right, right, right. Yeah, it's hard to.

Yeah, maybe we do vacillate that answer on that answer a little bit. But we also don't see every customer. So I would like to think that there is a large majority of people that do buy that way. I think that buying that was popular. I mean, from what I hear from places. But what is that, you know, does that change? Because I think that even if, you know, I have that mindset. Right.

Especially if, you know, a new friend opens up a new place or whatever. Obviously, you just got to go and go buy a bunch of stuff. Yeah, right, exactly. You have to. Yeah, you have to. You have to. And maybe you could go so far to say, if you live in that neighborhood,

you definitely should too. And I think people do promote that. Yeah. You might promote that. It was a funny, we're kind of at that moment now, probably maybe a couple months earlier, where it was such a motivation

to support local restaurants and stuff by post-mating every meal you could, you know, just to support them. And then at a certain point, it's like, I just drove by and they're kind of kicking ass with their business. That's what I was going to. We just don't want to.

That's what I was going to get. That's what I was going to get. It's also hard, too. Like, you got a family and kids, you know, and post-mating every day. It's not like the most financially. It's the easiest thing to do, finance. Crickling, yeah. And I mean, yeah, during these times, you want to support as much as possible.

Well, then it swung the other way, right? Stop using delivery apps coming in person. Oh, really? Yeah. Yeah, because delivery apps were taken 20%. Oh, is that what? Sometimes. Sometimes more.

So the. So the jam was, the jam was please come and visit, which I think is even more noble to a degree. Yeah. Don't get me wrong, we love the delivery app. They bring us, you know, business and they bring us customers that we shouldn't have, normally without them. Like, there's people who have never even been to our bakery that will just pick up their phone and say, boom.

This looks cool. Yeah. Like Beyonce. Cookie. Yeah. You know what I mean? Yeah. Beyonce, the singer.

Wow. She's a singer. No. I'm joking. My wife was going to kill me for saying that. But, yeah, I mean, it's important nowadays, right, to support as many local businesses as you can. I mean, whether it's a restaurant or like a flower shop or... I was keeping an eye on you guys the whole time.

Well, does that end? It was like, I hope that everything's going to be all right because, you know... We made a big shift. I mean, we push the brakes real hard. Like, right when COVID hit, we closed. everybody else was trying to just, I think, deal with it at the time. We closed for like, I think it was like two weeks and we redid. Well, the whole thing we closed for a total of eight weeks.

Well, between like all of our off and on shutdowns, like we had some, we had like a minor issue with a couple staff members getting COVID and we chose to close. And, you know, we stopped. We shifted our whole model. We turned into more of like the retail bakery slash marketplace. and we weren't really focused as much on food. Like we took most of the food off of the menu because people weren't really,

people were buying stuff to make it home at the beginning of COVID. Later on, people were, you know, more comfortable because people didn't want to eat food that we were making because they were scared. Right. And I didn't want to eat food that people were. Like, we were just going and like, I remember the first week we made like a $600 order at Costco.

I've never done anything like that in my life. I even put another fridge in my back. backyard to hold everything. Remember when you, but what was not to change the subject, but it made me think of it. Remember, it was like a lot of stuff happened right when COVID was,

we were like, in trouble. Are we going to need to shut down? Is this? Oh, the numbers are going to, right. Everyone's watching the same stuff. And we did,

it was, you know, we used to more. It transitioned into us starting a new concept out of Culver recently. But we would do a burger night. Or we would do a, a, oh, we did a burger night, right on that. So we did a, or we would do it, we did a shworma night. Oh, you know, because we would just either get bored or also like the, the staff would love to come and hang out at it.

Yeah. And also we were just for locals, because we never did dinner. Right. And we used to do pizza nights back in the day. I remember that, yeah. Yeah, we see the pizza nights. So right when COVID was kind of starting to become a thing. Yeah. We did a burger night. Right. To the point where I want to say, like, a mask was, I think, starting because we were pretty early on that. And also, like, like I think we started doing, as soon as we noticed, this might be a thing, we did everything to go. And, you know, we started doing it. But right around then, we had a, we had a, we couldn't cancel it because it was in the books for a few weeks, but we were doing a burger night. And as you know, the whole, the kitchen's exposed and it's all glass and I remember long story short. So we still did the burger night and Orr and I did the burger night.

Yeah. And I said, what do you? You want to work the oven? Or you want me to work the oven? So I said, okay, I'll put the burgers together. Yeah. You cook the burgers in the thousand degree wood oven and I'll compile them. Honestly, we like, didn't even have employees that night.

I remember. I remember that. Him and I did this whole night, and we had, you know, someone working, we had a cashier working, long story short, the line went in, line goes in front of the window where he and I are cooking. Right. And the night was pretty chill. It wasn't a big deal. But everything was a bit cautionary.

Sure. You didn't really know what to do. You didn't know. People wanted gloves. Are we going to scare people? It was before masks. People wanted you to wear gloves. So we were gloved and everything was to go.

But my gloves kept melting because of the oven. And his arm was burnt and the gloves were melting. And I had to take him off because. So he goes, oven was too hot. I was working with cast iron. The oil was splashing onto my hands and on the gloves. And a customer is at the glass and she's mouting and yelling.

Put your gloves on. She's going to make him put gloves on. As if he's not standing there. And I have gloves on because I'm assembling lettuce and buns. Yeah, cool things. And I'm, in his defense, I'm trying to pretend like nothing's going on and that the customer doesn't exist.

Yeah. As nice as I could be, I'm kind of my head's down. But obviously, we see that they're mouthing things and pointing. Before the shutdown. And he's, you know, he's in front of the oven. Yeah.

What's going on? What is that customer? Well, so, oh, they're scratching their nose or something. You just keep making burgers. You're doing a great job. I think I go back through the window. And my gloves were melted. Yeah.

And there's a melted glove right there. So I'm trying to point at the melted glove. And they're very, the customer's disgruntled. And they're telling the cashier, he needs to have gloves on. And then I'm trying to, it was a whole like. It was freaking out. It was right before. It was like a week or two before the shutdown.

Yeah. It was confusing time. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Now I understand. I mean, yeah. Did she eat the burger?

No, she left. She did. Yeah, she left. She didn't order. I believe, yeah, that's what happened. I think she was used to order. Well, until I put gloves on.

I was like, I can't. We were very apologetic. You know, we were like, we're trying our best, but the gloves are melting. And they were kind of like. It's also like dangerous. They were kind of, you know, it was a prerequisite to them ordering. Yeah. That the oven person was gloved.

So it didn't work out. Yeah, I mean, everything changed, right? Like the shutdown. happen. Yeah. Everything changed. Yeah. One of the last, one of the last, um, stops, I was, stopped at Woodland Hills and picked up bread. I was going to do Gabby Reese's podcast, uh, down in Malibu, and I, my schedule was screwed up and I couldn't bake her bread. I usually bring bread and she got some trash. I stopped there. And no, it was, it was good. Like you guys, no, your spot. And I, and I was, uh, but it was getting weird. Like it was, we were right on the cusp.

Right on the cusp. And, And, like, and you weren't doing certain things in there. You could only, you only have these breads in the rack. And it was like, oh, man, this is really going to get weird pretty fast. Yeah. And now things have almost changed permanently. Like, I went up to the valley and I'm like, let's put the bread back in the dining room. So the customer can grab it.

And then there were even some customers standing there. I was like, what do you think about this? And they were like, leave it and leave all the bread in the back. Really? Okay, fair enough. In Culver, you can grab it. It's bagged up. Yeah.

And we changed. I mean, there's no more indoor seating. Like, we remove the indoor seating completely. Right. Because we've gained, I mean, thank God, our business has been doing pretty well even with COVID because I feel like our, you know, the bakery is more of like a necessity, right? Like people need their bread, their coffee, pastries that they're not going to bake at home. Restaurants really got hit.

And so when we took food off the menu and we did only bread and parents, pastry for a while. Like we were okay. Yeah. Um, and now we're doing everything again. Right. But we, we, we, we, the whole interior of the space is dedicated to retail. We sell coffee. We sell butter. Oh, wow. All of our Shukhuka from Haseba. Right. We make like packs of the sauce so you can go home and make it at home. So our, our whole model has changed completely. Yeah, yeah. And I think if we didn't make that change, we wouldn't be, we wouldn't be, yeah. If you didn't adapt, like, you wouldn't be here. now. Yeah. Is that interesting? I bet people who didn't have the same beginnings that you had of grabbing flour from the restaurant and bringing it in because the truck can't go. Yeah. You're doing it

kind of outside and kind of on the fly. That kind of mentality. Yeah. Did you well? Like, rather than people that just were just traditional and had those kind of like set ways of doing things. We were, I mean, we were, we were, I remember like when we closed originally, I think I sat down with my dad and I was like, we're screwed. Yeah. I was like, this is going to close our business. And he was just like, get off your ass, change your style, change your model, and sell stuff that people need. And that's it. Smart. It is weird. And I mean, it became an outlet for people who were also, didn't want to go and wait and wait at those grocery lines. Like, those lines were wild.

I even told me, my wife was like, I can't wait for an hour for the grocery store and have people all over me. Like, everybody was terrified to be even six feet from people. Yeah, it was weird. We started, we had a curbside option. We basically closed down the whole street. Like, cars were lined up all around the bakery.

Wow. We were just running stuff out of that. Yeah. No, that was great. Nobody wanted to even get out of their cars. I was seeking small spots to go get stuff. And even, like, Petitua, who's... Yeah, they did.

They were, like, they started selling butter. Yeah, yeah. The Chinese place by us was selling, literally, toilet paper and paper plates. Yeah, weird. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, think about it.

You can go to a restaurant. Which we don't really have here. You can go to a restaurant and buy eggs and avocado that we were just selling stuff. We made vegetable boxes. We were selling stuff that we would normally use to make food. And then people didn't want to wait in line for the grocery store. So they came to us and bought, you know, bought from us. What's your favorite bread now that you make, that you like to eat?

Like what is, is there one that you? I just made my way through a buckwheat loaf. I ate a whole baguette today. Did you? We got this really good butter from France that we were trying out. You say one in the wheel, the golden wheel? No, it's a bordeauxire butter. And it's unbelievable.

Yeah. So, what's with the French butter? Well, it's cultured butter, right? So it's like what we used to make in the bakery. We used to make our own butter until it just became. A little tang to it. Yeah.

Yeah. So we would take a bunch of cream. We would culture it with some yoga. Healthy Harvey Harvey watches these podcasts. We don't. do it anymore. We could start again. And we would age it for a couple days.

We heard about it. We don't do it anymore. But if one were to do it. If one were to do it, we would buy it from a French person. But yeah, it resembles what we used to make at the bakery. Yeah. And you went through a whole baguette with it? A whole baguette, almost a whole baguette.

He cut it into little pieces. So it didn't feel like a whole baguette. Yeah. You usually kind of pick your battle. I do with a loat. And then I just, I wage war. The holla, the chala is great. Like if a hala, there's like a lone hala somewhere, I'll end up tearing it apart.

Yeah, so good. You go straight into the rack of all the hollas. That's true. And you take yours out of it. That's true. But yeah, my kids, my kids love the baguettes. They'll yell at me if I don't bring them home. That's a really hard thing to do at home.

We got a great, yeah. The baguette. We got a great bakery manager that puts a lot of, like, weird freaky loaves on the menu. Oh, yeah? You know, I know I enjoy the weird ones. He'll buy new flour and lead the charge on a, you know, a cool ancient grain loaf for a kind of,

I saw the ancient grain. I saw the dark, you had a dark loaf, like a rye. Buckwheat. That buckwheat we always have. It's really dark. Yeah. It's really cool. The square one, the like rectangle rye.

I just saw it on the, in the list. In the list. Yeah. So it's most likely the rye. But I've been turned on by the, something happened during the pandemic where I started fantasizing about going to the Netherlands and like going to see those bakeries and stuff. Yeah.

And those dark breads and stuff. Yeah. I really got turned on with that. So when I, that one kind of jumped out at me. Yeah. It'd be nice to go to where you don't recognize any of the breads. It's amazing.

That would be cool. Yeah. Because you're just conditioned to know. Yeah. You know, even if you went full weirdo mode in states. Right. You wouldn't,

yeah. You're going to get real freaked out in. Yeah. Like their most popular. Popular bread. I had never seen before. See what they, see what they're making.

Yeah. It's not going to be anything like what we make or go to most European countries, right? Yeah, go to Germany. It's just going to be nine types of rye and you're really going to get, you're spelt or by force. Man, that rye is tricky. A force of rye. I didn't realize how a lot of rye.

Yeah. The rye just, uh, it's just a big mush. We tried to keep a rye starter in Alex's house. Oh, yeah. And we almost destroyed the plumbing. Yeah, they had a remodel the house. It was terrible. It jammed up the pipes?

Yeah, it was. Oh, really? We put a disclaimer on our bread kit. Please don't. Don't put it down. Flush it down your sink on. Oh, man. It'll screw you up.

That's amazing. Don't even eat it. Don't do anything. Don't even look at it. Why are we even selling this to you? It says all that. Bread kits were a big hit for COVID. people.

Oh, man. Because we used to do bread classes, and that was a really good source of revenue for us. And so we just decided to get people like a cheat sheet with a recipe and all the steps and all of the ingredients for it. Well, because no one could get yeast. No one could get yeast. No one could get anything. Flour.

People were buying 50 pound bags of flour. I was like, what are you going to do with this flour? Like, I don't even go through that much flour at home. I brought a 50 pound bag of flour home, and my wife wanted to kill me. And I think it still sits there. Oh, really? Well, you were like, yeah, you were like, I don't know if we can do this. I'm like, I don't know if we can't bake bread at home.

I can't bake bread at home. It's just. Right. Yeah, you want some piece. It would be like me doing stand up in the living room. Yeah, exactly. Enough already. Stop.

Kill you. Right, exactly. You have your avenues. Exactly. Enough is enough. Yeah. Podcast at home. Yeah, but we were ordering so much flour and just selling the bags of flour.

We still do. still those The things that people were buying were paper towels toilet paper flour sugar

like those things were like yeah what a weird mass buying those it didn't feel like a bakery for a little bit it was real weird yeah

so now that things are slowly getting back to normal and you're healthy again with your spots and get back to like where you kind of left off is there

do you have in your mind like a limit of how big you want to get like when you see like what tartine did and like how they got, just went like too crazy at certain spots. I mean,

I think our main mentors and our people behind us are always like, don't expand too fast. I mean, suck in almost everything, though, because we try hard sometimes and it takes us forever.

So I think we'd like to expand more. I push it very aggressively. I'm, yeah, I mean, we're, I think we just keep going until you can't.

Until it gets weird. Well, not even gets weird, right? Like, if I'm just, if we're just going to stop, like, just like retire.

Like, why would I, you know, I want to keep growing and keep expanding. And I think that, you know, opening now with the commissary, it's easier for us to manage things like quality. Right. When we opened our Valley Shop, we tried to have two bakery teams. It was, it was a nightmare. Yeah. Oh, that's interesting.

I was wondering about that. I was wondering, like, how do you, do you have like a whole other group here that's? Yeah. I mean, we tried that. And then we realized quickly that the reason that the first bakery was so successful is because Alex and I did like six people's jobs. Right. And so hiring a team, you needed seven people at a little thousand square foot cafe

that didn't make enough money to justify that. Yeah. So now that we have the commissary, we can open little cafes, you know, not too far from the commissary and just pop them up and pop them up and not have to worry about a bakery inside the space and funnel product. And we're also able to open other concepts. Yeah. We're actually, we just launched our pizza concept, our New York style pizza concept.

Really? Like the big 18-inch pies. Wow. We launched it out of our Culver bakery. Yeah? Because the bakery side is like empty now because there's no bakers there. Because it's all coming from the commissary. Exactly.

So when, right now, Wednesday through Sunday, from 5 p.m. until 10 p.m., you can come in and buy a big 18-inch like New York-style pizza. Wow. That's a great idea. We're opening a brick and mortar. hopefully like July July uh-huh over the Pizza place in Beverly Hills in Beverly Hills yeah really what's the name it's called Fullproof pizza full proof pizza yeah nice yeah this is very exciting yeah so for me I

it's kind of like we tried to replicate pizza night a little bit yeah yeah done it in so long I mean at first we were like you know we don't want to grow too much and we don't want to be too too big but like but then we also have families and we have goals and dreams and you know we want we want to continue to grow in the right way, right? Like, we don't want to lose the quality as much as possible, but we think we're doing a pretty good job. Yeah. We've been blessed with having people on our staff, too, that are like, what are we doing

next? Yeah. Or can I go open another spot? Or, you know, are we going to do another spot? Right. If we do this, let's do this. So, I mean, we're just, that helps a lot, too. And you've got a good reputation now.

Like, people know you guys. Like, people know that this is quality. They know they're looking forward to it. It's definitely, you know, and it's not just because I'm into bread. It's like just friends know you. Like it's definitely. Yeah, I think we've, yeah, I mean, I think we've, I think we've kind of set there and calver for long enough to be somewhat established.

Yeah. It's hard, though. I mean, for as much as we could say, yeah, we want to attack it. I would say at the pace that we open things, we have to consistently have the mindset of we do want to expand constantly. Right. I think that it would be... We're pretty aggressive.

Keep the momentum going. Yeah, yeah. And everything just takes so long to do a new project. We're also two, you know, two guys that are pretty restless and we're pretty hungry for more always. Yeah. If we just became, like, complacent with what we were doing, it would just be too mundane for us. Right. We constantly want to do more and grow and do more fun things.

I mean, we have chef background, so, you know, the new concept of, you know, pizza allows us to kind of bring that to the table. Yeah. You know, we're doing this big bakery in Long Beach, which is two times the size almost of our Culver City location. Yeah, you say, yeah, you get, like, attached to weird things. Do you still wake up, like, baker's hours? Like, what are your, what's your day? I have a little, I have a new baby at home, so I have a man. Congratulations.

I mean, it just depends. She gets up early, so I'm still up early, but. I got two kids at home, two toddlers. I have a two-year-old and a four-year-old. So no. To answer the question directly, but the, you know, the lay of the lands changed. Is someone on the commissary at a strange hours? It does.

Almost 24 hours. I mean, we have crews that work in the mornings, like Baker hours. And then we have crews midday that do prep for our other locations, like food prep comes out of there as well. Right. Okay. So it's allowed us to kind of streamline the whole business. Yeah.

All right. We kind of just jump in where we're needed at this point, right? Like, I focus more on food quality and growing the company at this point, and Alex is focusing on, like, the bakery and the commissary and the bread team and sourcing and, you know. Yeah. And then we meet in the middle sometimes as well. Right, right. Like, we both love to open projects together.

It's, like, been a fun thing for us to do an opening together. So that's cool. We're six years in, too, so we had to, like, time out each other. Right. You know, we can't work together every day. Yeah, of course. We had like, I was worried about putting you this close in the podcast.

Yeah. I mean, it's time's almost up. In the beginning, it was wild. I mean, we had a, we had a fun first year where we were like at each other's throats because we were together from 2 a.m.

until about 8 o'clock at night. And one of our, I mean, our employees would like peek their heads in and see if we were like fighting or arguing and they would like wait to come in sometimes. Yeah, it's intense. I was going to say that like,

I mean, we're not working the bakery hours, but we just had our buddy Ryan visit from 16 bricks in Ohio. Amazing Baker. And it's not, it may not be Baker hours, but you are pretty much, for the most part, the support system. So your phone is on 24-7. Our phone is, your phone needs to be plugged in and on Baker hours. It's like, we had Ryan over at the Culver Shop. Yeah. And bless his heart, he just wanted to sit down.

for a coffee and to catch up. Yeah. And he was on a call the whole time. Yeah. I think at one point he just let the call go and still hung out with us. So I think we are in a way. But, um, yeah, once you, once you open up, that's it. And they, they're coming.

And we have, I mean, we have the spots that are open also until 10 o'clock at night, right? Like now the beach is spot, Hasiva is now open until then. So it's got to be a cool feeling, though. Like you, you, you had this idea. and it's really taking shape and that like you'll be in bed and you turn your phone, I mean, your phone's on, but it's off and turn out the lights and knowing, knowing that the machine is still going. Like there's still stuff going.

That's got to be a pretty good feeling. I mean, I know it's nerve. Scary. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Sometimes it's like, yeah, yeah, yeah. There's that phone call that the oven exploded.

Right. I know. You guys know Kate, right? Kate's bread. Yeah. Yeah. She's so great. Yeah.

Yeah. And I don't know. I never visited. Have her on the show. I did. Oh, dear. Oh, dear. I went up to her shop, yeah.

I wish I got to go. Alex went up there. I love her, and I wish I got to go. I just done like a ton of mushrooms a day before. I was like still flying and we went down to visit and I felt like she was like, she knew it, you know. Did she? Yeah, it was a great experience. She's amazing.

She was awesome. But I only bring it up because, you know, she's just a one woman shop. Yeah. If the fridge goes down, the shop is down. It's just the way it goes. Like, you see it on, it doesn't matter the size of the bakery. I mean, if the cool. If the cooler goes down, you lose the bread.

Yeah, you're just, that's it. Yeah, I mean, we've... Hopefully people are buying coffee or something, you know. Yeah, we've had those moments. Well, you guys are amazing. Thank you so much for doing this. I was really... Yeah, it's been great.

Yeah, I was really super stoked that you guys were coming in. I'm a huge fans and keep spreading the word about you guys everywhere I go. We really appreciate you. We really appreciate it. Yeah. Come check it out. Yeah, it's great. Wednesday, well, it's tomorrow Wednesday?

Yeah. So Wednesday through Sunday. Wednesday through Sunday every week. Culver City. All right, cool. Bring bread. Yeah. We'll bring you a pizza.

You know, it's a friend. Never have your bread this morning. Like I get into the fridge and then I bake it before my radio show in the morning. And I came out and it was like mediocre. Like it didn't shape well last night. And I was just like, this is like telling jokes to Seinfeld. I'm not bringing a bread along to these guys. I brought you a real bad loaf.

Alex was always a professionalist. I always said the worst loaf you're going to make is still going to blow people's minds. Yeah. And you're going to be so upset about it. it. They're going to be like, this is the best bread I've ever had and you'll be like, I hate you. I know, exactly. So, I mean, people love bread.

Yeah, they do. All right, guys, thanks for having and thank you. Yeah, thank you. Appreciate you. Cheers. Cheers. Cheers. Cheers again. Okay, that was our big interview with the, I can't say enough good things about my pals or an Alexander at Lodgebread.

Really go and check them out. Look them up online. Look them up on their social media, their Instagram. It'll make you saliv It'll make you buy an airplane ticket and fly home, fly into L.A. just to get some of this bread. No quick bite today. We're not doing a quick bite today. I had somebody lined up and it kind of fell through and I just didn't want to rush it. So there was enough there with the Lodge Bread, I think. We'll do a quick bite next week. But that was another great time. Thank you guys so much for listening. It really does mean a lot. Make sure that you review.

Give me some feedback. Let me know what you like and what you don't. And also check out my tour dates on tompapa.com. The whole tour is starting up again, which is very exciting. Go to tompapa.com for that. You guys are the best. Enjoy your day.