{"id":259192,"date":"2026-04-09T11:17:14","date_gmt":"2026-04-09T11:17:14","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/259192\/"},"modified":"2026-04-09T11:17:14","modified_gmt":"2026-04-09T11:17:14","slug":"morning-baker-celebrates-pastry-chefs-who-opened-l-a-bakeries","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/259192\/","title":{"rendered":"‘Morning Baker’ celebrates pastry chefs who opened L.A. bakeries"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

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\u2019s Clown Room<\/a>, neighborhood bakery-cafe Friends & Family<\/a> looks blue-hour quiet. But the morning crew is nearly two hours into the week\u2019s biggest \u201cbake.\u201d 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\u2019clock.<\/p>\n

Co-owner and baker Roxana Jullapat \u2014 who has just published her second cookbook, \u201cMorning Baker: Recipes and Rituals for Breakfast and Beyond<\/a>\u201d \u2014 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. <\/p>\n

\"Croissants \"Roxana <\/p>\n

Croissants fill the bakery case at Friends & Family, which baker and co-owner Roxana Jullapat opened with her partner nine years ago. She left her career as a fine-dining pastry chef and never looked back. <\/p>\n

Jullapat is also among the first in the latest wave of pastry chefs who have chosen to open bakeries<\/a> rather than work in restaurants creating plated desserts, either because they decided to move on or their jobs were eliminated. That was the impetus of her new book, she says. <\/p>\n

\u201cPastry chefs are much less well-regarded and far less celebrated\u201d than chefs, says Jullapat. \u201cI feel like [L.A.\u2019s] proliferation of artisan bakeries is our response to that. … It\u2019s an incredible flip. It\u2019s magical, is what it is.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe are in a class of our own, really talented people with really solid and specific ways of looking at food,\u201d says Jullapat, a champion of baking with whole grains and local flours (and as the internet\u2019s pie queen<\/a> for her mesmerizing crust-crimping skills). \u201cWe brought all that experience and opened our own shops.\u201d <\/p>\n

\"Roxana <\/p>\n

\u201cI love a muffin,\u201d says Roxana Jullapat. \u201cIt\u2019s cake, but it\u2019s not pretentious cake.\u201d Chocolate morning muffins \u2014 made with chocolate, rye flour and yogurt \u2014 are a recipe from her book \u201cMorning Baker.\u201d<\/p>\n

(Calvin Alagot\/Los Angeles Times)<\/p>\n

And each bakery has its own distinct voice. \u201cYou go to Fat + Flour<\/a>, it\u2019s a very specific bakery. You go to Petitgrain in Santa Monica, it\u2019s a very specific bakery. Have you been to Flouring<\/a>? That\u2019s where I get all my cakes now. Recently, Wilde\u2019s does all that British stuff. Santa Canela is a beautiful panader\u00eda<\/a>. Gusto does a beautiful job<\/a>. … And about time we see pan de sal everywhere, about time there\u2019s ube everywhere,\u201d she says, referring to Filipino flavors and bakeries such as San & Wolves in Long Beach<\/a>. <\/p>\n

Jullapat\u2019s pastry case at Friends & Family, which now has a second location in Silver Lake, draws lines of customers for its abundance and diversity: cookies; scones; tarts; quiche; muffins; doughnuts; bagels; several kinds of bread; sometimes concha; recently, a Salvadoran cake called quesadilla, similar to pound cake but with salty dry-aged cheese folded into it; as well as all kinds of croissants \u2014 plain ones that shatter with flakiness and others filled with halva or pistachio cream or fudgy chocolate customized to her taste by San Francisco-based Tcho<\/a>.<\/p>\n

And nothing is made with only refined white flour. \u201cItems that have white flour also have whole grain flour, at minimum 20%,\u201d she says. \u201cThat\u2019s our rule.\u201d<\/p>\n

\"The \"Roxana \"Croissant <\/p>\n

The bakers at Friends & Family make several kinds of croissants, such as the pistachio croissant, left. Roxana Jullapat hands out chocolate muffins to her team. The morning shift includes making laminated dough for the croissants. (Carlin Stiehl\/For The Times) <\/p>\n

After her first book, \u201cMother Grains: Recipes for the Grain Revolution<\/a>,\u201d was published five years ago, she said she didn\u2019t anticipate that people were so ready and hungry for cooking and baking with whole grains. So \u201cMorning Baker\u201d addresses and treats these grains \u2014 including buckwheat, barley, corn, landrace varieties of wheat such as Sonora \u2014 as part of a daily routine, with a lot of recipes that aren\u2019t special weekend projects. <\/p>\n

\u201cI love a muffin. I think it\u2019s because I am not American,\u201d says Jullapat, who is Costa Rican and Thai and grew up thinking of American food as the ultimate indulgence. \u201cIt\u2019s cake, but it\u2019s not pretentious cake. You don\u2019t have to frost it, you don\u2019t have to decorate it. But you can make it absolutely delicious.\u201d <\/p>\n

She unwaveringly uses whole grains: rye for her chocolate muffins<\/a>, graham for pig-shaped cookies, spelt in her croissant dough. \u201cEinkorn was my first love, and I still love it,\u201d says Jullapat, who bakes her favorite shortbread with the ancient grain \u2014 the oldest known wheat variety, appreciated for its high protein, nutty flavor and silky texture. In \u201cMorning Baker,\u201d find recipes for her einkorn carrot muffins and pear, chocolate and einkorn scones \u2014 and a primer on her favorite flours and millers.<\/p>\n

\"Roxana <\/p>\n

Roxana Jullapat says has a couple of rules when it comes to muffins. You should be able to make them within an hour from start to finish, so that you can have them for breakfast. And they should include healthful ingredients such as good flour. <\/p>\n

She has experimented with a new variety of triticale, in development at UC Davis<\/a>, \u201cand it\u2019s a sexy m\u2014,\u201d Jullapat says. \u201cIt has the properties of wheat with the incredible flavor of rye. If that flour was available to me in quantity, it would be everywhere on the menu.\u201d <\/p>\n

She\u2019s also a fan of durum \u2014 \u201clike a whole grain semolina\u201d \u2014 from Grist & Toll, the Pasadena-based flour mill, one of L.A.\u2019s first and oldest. The durum is grown in California from the seed of an Iraqi variety, known for its sweet, malty flavor. Grist & Toll founder Nan Kohler\u2019s flours are \u201cso influential to anything we make,\u201d Jullapat says. \u201cI don\u2019t think she realizes how much her business affects ours.<\/p>\n

Time 40 minutes <\/p>\n

Yields Makes 12 muffins <\/p>\n

\u201cGrain makes the full-circle story of a bakery,\u201d she says. \u201cYou can\u2019t have a bakery if there wasn\u2019t a seed, if there wasn\u2019t a grower, if there wasn\u2019t a miller.\u201d <\/p>\n

Jullapat, who formerly worked with chefs Nancy Silverton<\/a> and Suzanne Goin, also celebrates Southern California fruit, often with themed events, including: Strawberry Fest every spring (think strawberry danish, strawberry-rhubarb financier and brown butter strawberry jam bars) and Peach Fest in the summer (peach hand pie, peach brioche bun, peach almond tart, peach cloud cake). <\/p>\n

For anyone looking for a deep dive into whole-grain croissants, a chapter in \u201cMorning Baker\u201d covers the entire process: making and folding the dough, proofing and shaping. The hybrid dough is a user-friendly combination of refined and whole grain flours so that it holds its shape while staying malleable for home bakers. <\/p>\n

\"The <\/p>\n

Friends & Family has became a staple East Hollywood neighborhood bakery, with a fully loaded pastry case that customers line up for.<\/p>\n

Jullapat\u2019s original manuscript was 600 pages that covered the full day: savory dishes, lunch food, snacks in the afternoon, family-sized dinners. After working on the project for 2 1\/2 years, the minute she sent the manuscript to the editor, she says she had an overwhelming feeling that the book should be just breakfast.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe reasons were multiple. We had far more material for breakfast than anything else. It is the kind of food I felt most comfortable with. It\u2019s the food that I eat the most of. It is reflective of my job, that is the time that I\u2019m awake, these are the things I do, bake, eat, everything, and that\u2019s what we serve here.\u201d<\/p>\n

She also wrote the majority of the book early in the morning. The baking crew arrives every day at 3 a.m., and when not \u201con a station\u201d \u2014 in charge of one of the ovens \u2014 she would write. <\/p>\n

The flip to opening a bakery meant a life flip in another profound way, she says. Instead of being the last person in the kitchen, making the last sale, serving the last course, turning off the ovens and fryers at the end of the night, she\u2019s up at 2 a.m. every day, and \u201cnow I\u2019m a morning baker making my own rules.\u201d <\/p>\n

Roxana Jullapat will be at the Los Angeles Times Food and Now Serving booth at the Festival of Books on Saturday, April 18, from 3 to 4 p.m. signing books. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The sky is still a dark indigo-purple at 5 a.m. over this eastern stretch of Hollywood Boulevard, where…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":259193,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[27],"tags":[10276,61235,1431,114333,413,114335,114331,48,52,51,47,50,49,114332,36395,2259,114334,315,44225,24390,72],"class_list":{"0":"post-259192","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-los-angeles","8":"tag-bakery","9":"tag-croissant","10":"tag-family","11":"tag-flour","12":"tag-food","13":"tag-full-day","14":"tag-jullapat","15":"tag-la","16":"tag-la-headlines","17":"tag-la-news","18":"tag-los-angeles","19":"tag-los-angeles-headlines","20":"tag-los-angeles-news","21":"tag-morning-baker","22":"tag-pastry-chef","23":"tag-recipe","24":"tag-several-kind","25":"tag-time","26":"tag-wheat","27":"tag-whole-grain","28":"tag-year"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/259192","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=259192"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/259192\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/259193"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=259192"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=259192"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=259192"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}