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Happy Anniversary to Us!

96 LAYERS

 

Our croissants take our Dojo team 4 days to make. Can we speed up the process? Absolutely! However, we choose not to use dough conditioners to accelerate it. Instead, we rely on the magic ingredient of time, which allows the gluten to relax and the flavor to develop.

 

At the end of this 4-day journey, we create a magnificent work of art - 96 layers of Normandy butter, each as thin as a strand of hair, layered between our croissant dough.

  

And for my fellow engineers who want to know the math behind our 96 layers, here’s the breakdown!

 

  • On day 3 all of our lamination occurs. The first step in lamination is to sandwich 1kg of Beurre D'Isigny between two layers of croissant dough. LAYER COUNT: 1

  • After a rest in the cooler, we proceed to our second pass, where the "butter sandwich" is stretched even thinner. Then, we fold it in thirds, ultimately creating three layers (3 x 1 = 3). LAYER COUNT: 3

  • After yet another rest in our coolers, we roll out this dough again, then fold it back on itself twice, creating four layers of three (4 x 3 = 12). LAYER COUNT: 12

  • Then, you guessed it, another rest in our coolers before its final stretch. At this final step, we fully stretch it out, then cut it into triangles and roll the dough into the perfect croissants you see in the photo above. There are four revolutions in our roll, creating eight layers of 12 (8 x 12 = 96). FINAL LAYER COUNT: 96!

 

And it is each of these 96 layers of butter that are key to the delicate, yet rich flavor of the IZOLA croissant. Additionally, did you know that the moisture in the butter also contributes to the formation of the air pockets that create the honeycomb crumb structure of a croissant? As the heat of our incredible SALVA ovens hits the croissant, the butter releases steam, which creates these pockets (with the help of some yeast too!).

 

We're serving up these architectural marvels 7 days a week. Hot from the oven from 7a-2p. Pre-order now or just pop on by.

 

In a rush and have a pre-order? Just call us at the bakery when you arrive, and we'll bring your order out to your car with a smile! We call it IZOLA Drive By.

Thank you to Hannah for the gift of your art. Your watercolor graces the wall of our office and we look upon it fondly.

HAPPY ANNIVERSARY TO US...

Tomorrow we celebrate IZOLA's 5th anniversary. I am humbled, astonished, and so grateful. In many ways, it has been a long 5 years, and in other ways it has felt like a blink of an eye.

 

From our humble beginnings teaching ourselves how to make croissants, failing miserably over and over again in more ways than you could imagine, and lowering our sourdough and croissants out our 3rd story window to guests waiting on the street below, this has been an adventure to say the least!

 

And fast forward to today at our beautiful new location...where we have an amazingly strong and inspiring team that provides the kind of hospitality my Grandma Izola would have loved. It brings me so much gratitude to see the joy on our guests' faces in the dining room.

 

Thanks for walking along on this journey with us. 

 

PS - For a peek back in time to our beginnings, here are a few of the earliest email newsletters I sent out.

LIVE MUSIC SATURDAYS


Every Saturday, we host live music at the bakeshop from 8a-1p. Come on by to see how talented our local San Diego musicians are! Follow us on Instagram to see the lineup!


IZOLA Named Editor's Pick...



MOP IT UP!

Ooey gooey, deep brown butter flavor soaked into our vanilla knot, topped with Maldon sea salt from the UK - I just keep wanting to take bite after bite of our new Brown Butter Caramel Knot until there is nothing left. And I'm not done until I mop up all the goodness of the brown butter caramel that drips onto the plate.

 

Hot from the oven 7 days a week, from 7a-2p. Pre-order now or just pop on by.

 

In a rush and have a pre-order? Just call us at the bakery when you arrive, and we'll bring your order out to your car with a smile! We call it IZOLA Drive By. 




Hooray! We're honored to be named as one of Ranch & Coast Magazine's editor's picks for Best Restaurants 2025. It was so humbling to share the same space as the other picks...and a solid reminder of how lucky we are here in San Diego to be surrounded by so much flavor. Check out the other picks - I definitely added a few spots to my list that I can't wait to try!


LIVE MUSIC SATURDAYS


Every Saturday, we host live music at the bakeshop from 8a-1p. Come on by to see how talented our local San Diego musicians are! Follow us on Instagram to see the lineup!


LEATEA

8-9a

 

Leatea (San Diego native Dylann Jelden) has been a musician all her life, beginning with classical violin at age 4. She began writing songs and incorporating guitar in high school. She performs regularly in San Diego.




CARA CORMIER

9-10a

 

Cara grew up on a small farm in Kansas singing folk songs, four-part acapella hymns, and musical theatre soundtracks. Cara's style is reminiscent of John Prine and Gillian Welch channeling Bonnie Raitt at a bluegrass jam. She enjoys turning her personal humiliations into songs and sharing them with the world.

Her first album, Kansas Stories, is available on all streaming platforms.



MICHAEL DWYER

11a-12p

 

Michael J. Dwyer is a singer-songwriter, playing guitar and harmonica and singing rock, folk, blues, and Americana covers and originals.








Quality?.....Check!


QUALITY CHECK!

 

Here we are at the end of a 4-day journey for our croissants. As our croissants are coming out of our amazing Salva ovens, our superstar Bake team will perform a Quality Check (QC) on the bake. The team is looking to identify any croissants that might be undersized, improperly proofed, or don't meet our aesthetic requirements. Our QC cards empower our team members by removing any subjectivity from the check - they can size the croissant against the sizing chart, check for a color match on the bake, and they'll also cut into random samples throughout the day to check the proof.

 

This chocolate croissant looks perfectly proofed with its lacy, honeycomb interior. Mmmm.....Pillowy delightfulness!

 

Did you know that our croissants and sourdough bread are always served hot from the oven? That means we bake in small batches the whole time we're open, so you can experience the freshest croissants and sourdough, no matter what time you visit us. A croissant still hot from the oven?? Life changing.

 

OPEN 7 DAYS A WEEK

7a - 2p

 

In a rush and have a pre-order? Just call us at the bakery when you arrive, and we'll bring your order out to your car with a smile! We call it IZOLA Drive By. 





Thank you to Gareth for stopping by IZOLA and featuring us in his compilation of some of San Diego's bakeries. Gareth and I had a lot of fun eating pastries and telling stories.

 

We're extremely fortunate here in San Diego to have so many innovative bakeries. In the East Village, we have ASA Bakery and Hinar as our neighbors, and soon Relic Bageri too. Let's create an official "Bakery District," complete with a bakery crawl.

 

We love the video and all the new people who learned about IZOLA from Gareth. If you stopped by this Memorial Day weekend and got caught up in the throngs of people visiting us, sorry for the line down the block and for running out of everything. We loaded our proofers with absolutely everything we could make.

 

We had a couple of sell-out days, and to those who may not have had a chance to try our croissants and sourdough, thank you for your understanding. I hope you'll visit us soon. The pro tip? Place a pre-order ahead of time, and we'll have it ready for ya. (and the pro-pro tip: use the promo code "FAMILY" for 20% off your 1st preorder.)

 

And thanks to our absolutely rockstar IZOLA team for pushing hard... our team fulfilled one order every minute this Sunday.....for 7 hours straight! 🤯 You're bringing so much joy to our community, thank you team!

 

Check out Gareth's video here:


LIVE MUSIC SATURDAYS


Every Saturday, we host live music at the bakeshop from 8a-1p. Come on by to see how talented our local San Diego musicians are! Follow us on Instagram to see the lineup!





©2025 by IZOLA Bakery

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