From Ciabatta to Panettone, a Bread Story of Success by Manresa, California

One thing you’ll realize when listening to the story of Avery Ruzicka, the star baker and young entrepreneur behind Manresa Bread, is that tenacity, dedication and patience can take you very far away from your initial projects. Her bread – originally famous in California but now available nationwide – is the result of tireless experimentation. Ruzicka left her home in North Carolina to study at the French Culinary Institute in New York City. When she moved to California to work at Manresa, a restaurant in Los Gatos with 3 Michelin stars, they had no open positions for cooks. So she offered to help as a baker. “I started as a food runner and volunteered my time in the morning to help in the kitchen as an intern and then offered to help with bread,” she says. “In the afternoon, I quickly changed my clothes and put my hair up in order to work in the front of the house.” At the time, chef David Kinch’s restaurant didn’t have a proper baker on the team. “They didn’t pay anyone to specifically make bread. Since I helped improve their recipe, they created a ‘baker’ position for me just eight months after I started working at Manresa. It felt like a dream.”

Manresa saw an uptick in business when customers started buzzing about Ruzicka’s perfectly moist, crusty loaves. She was then presented with the opportunity to sell her bread at the Campbell farmer’s market, so they increased production. Ruzicka explains, “We were still working in such a small kitchen, with no space for a mixer, and had to be very creative and imaginative to figure out how to make this happen.” Her dream of opening a proper bakery became a reality in the wake of a bad accident. In 2015, Manresa had to close its doors due to a bad fire. “After looking for some spaces in the area, an opportunity arrived to open a bakery just across the street from Manresa,” says Ruzicka. Manresa Bread was born in Los Gatos in 2015; now, Ruzicka and co-owner Andrew Burnham own three bakeries (the others are in Campbell and Los Altos).

The array of bread is so wide that you’ll feel like you are inside a European bakery with a Californian influence: The heavenly moist, fresh whole-grain and milled sourdough; their poppy seeds buns; simple bagels (you can taste that the baker has lived in New York for a long time); and their crispy, perfectly browned baguettes. They also like to play with seasonal products (cherry walnut loaf, for example) and the starter is available to try making your own bread at home.

With Covid-19 cases increasing in California, Ruzicka and her staff have decided to take things slow. They closed their shops at the beginning of the pandemic, but they have remained open for pick-up orders. Still, demand hasn’t slowed; their bread always sells out. According to Ruzicka, the magic is in the ingredients. Using only high-quality, organic products makes “our product taste better,” explains the baker.

Manresa Bread didn’t just expand in terms of baking capacity, either; they also bought a mill where they produce their own flour. Ruzicka explains why: “One thing I noticed when traveling back home to North Carolina and visiting a bakery called Farm and Sparrow is that their use of fresh flour sets them apart from many other amazing bakeries. The final product just tastes different.”

When it comes to her advice for at-home bakers, Ruzicka keeps it simple: “Just take notes. It’s the only way to keep track of your product, make improvements, and stay consistent.”